Modernised Modes of Government Ethics

Abstract

This chapter reviews international trends in “government ethics”, taking that term to refer to the evolving ethics regimes typically managed by political executives to regulate the official conduct of the administrative branch of government. I begin by noting some examples of the ways that chief political executives now take prominent public responsibility for government ethics. Ethics plays an important role in defining political leadership. Heads of government increasingly use “ethics” as an important instrument to manage public trust in government. Competing trends distribute responsibility for government ethics widely across what I term “the lattice of leadership” that is characteristic of modernized democratic governance. In liberal-democratic regimes, government ethics is increasingly at the junction of competing institutional interests. At times, public trust demands greater ethical responsibility from heads of government; at other times, public trust calls for wider public accountability across the governance system (Bovens 1998, pp. 22).