I Do Solemnly Swear: Institutional Enforcement of the Oath of Office to Fight Public Corruption

Abstract

Public officials are oath takers and expected to uphold the law, but criminal convictions provide evidence that corruption exists. When public officials violate their oath, these violations evade ethical norms of behavior important to protecting the integrity inherent in the public office. This article synthesizes the literature on public corruption and related fields and presents a conceptual model to help us understand public leader violations of the oath and factors that enable corrupt behavior more broadly. Through an exploratory analysis of news articles and local government websites of examples of federal corruption convictions from the top ten most corrupt juridictions in the United States, this preliminary model finds six factors influence corruption within a jurisdiction at two collective levels: (1) organizational, and (2) institutional. A case study of an independent nonprofit’s experience in anti-corruption further informs a claim that corrupt leaders (i.e., oath-takers) often involve and exert corrupt influence on subordinates. Findings on convicted corruptions expands the conceptual model to inform on institutional factors that may mitigate corruption. Failure to act on corruption creates a distributional consequence for society. Public corruption minimizes equal access to public goods and services, diverts public finances for personal gain, and undermines public confidence.