Corruption In Local Government Research Articles

Viewpoints: Ethics in Public Service for the New Millennium

Corruption in local government - some ethical issues of the last 25 years, Rodney Brooke Parliament and ethical behaviour, Michael Hunt the ethics of equal opportunities, Susan Corby courts, Parliament and public authorities under the British Human Rights Act 1998, George J. Szablowski the public interest - a political and administrative convenience, Barry J. O'Toole setting standards in a new organization - the case of the British Civil Service Commission, Richard A. Chapman the inherently unethical nature of public service ethics, Lawrence Pratchett is democracy a substitute for ethics? Administrative reform and accountability, B. Guy Peters democratic accountability and models of governance - purchaser/provider, owner/trustee, Colin Campbell contracting, the enterprise culture and public sector ethics, Martin Painter between autonomy and accountability - Hong Kong's senior civil servants in search of an identity, Anthony B.L. Cheung ethics, governance and constitutions -the case of Baron Haussmann, John A. Rohr ethics in public service for the new millennium, Richard A. Campbell.

Communism and Camorra in Naples

The town of Marano borders Naples' city boundaries to the north. With a population of nearly 60,000, it has its own local administrative structure, although in many ways it is part of the ``greater Naples'' conurbation of close to three million people. One striking peculiarity of Marano is that it is the only town council in southern Italy administered by the far left party Rifondazione Comunista (Communist Refoundation, or RC). This peculiarity is compounded when one considers that Marano has one of the highest concentrations of organised criminal activity (which in Naples takes the name of Camorra rather than Mafia) in the Naples urban area, historically led by the four Nuvoletta brothers – and a far left council administering a highly criminal locality is a highly unusual occurrencein Italy. This article first presents the town of Marano and its history of Camorra activity, before analysing the national politics of RC and the activity of its members in Marano, principally as administrators of the town council. It then concludes with a brief critique of the weaknesses associated with a strategy of traditional Keynesian public sector policies being enacted on a local scale, both in terms of the corruption of local and national government, and the dominance of national and international economic trends which ultimately determine many of the major social and economic characteristics of towns such as Marano.

The Business Politicians: Reflections from a Study of Political Corruption

Political corruption has not disappeared with modernization, as some scholars believed would happen. On the contrary, corruption in Western democracies is often described as 'systemic', 'institutionalized' or 'diffuse'. At the same time, the political class is said to have undergone considerable change: catch-all parties and 'media power' have changed the structure of political careers and created new types of professional politician. Little thought, however, has been given to the specific consequences of corruption for the political class. How do the careers of corrupt politicians evolve? What are the capabilities required of a politician who participates systematically in corrupt exchange? What are the motivations which push individuals, in situations of widespread corruption, in the direction of politics? These are the questions with which the present article proposes to deal. In the first section some hypotheses will be presented on the alterations caused in representative democratic regimes by corruption. In particular, the idealtype of the 'business politician' will be defined as one possessing the abilities necessary for the functioning of the system of corruption. Thereafter, an application of these hypotheses to empirical research will be proposed. The results of an investigation of a number cases of political corruption in local government in Italy will be used to illustrate some of the attributes of the 'business politician': in particular the skills in illegality enabling the organization of corrupt exchange (part II), the networking abilities corrupt politicians utilize to create support and complicity (part III) and, lastly, the fact that politics is their only available route to upward mobility (part IV). In part V, a contribution to the theory of political corruption will be offered, starting from the concept of 'moral cost'. Proceeding deductively, we will discuss the conditions which reduce the moral cost of participation in illegal activities and therefore increase willingness to participate in corrupt dealings.

The Continuing Saga of Municipal Reform

Governmental responses to corruption are embedded in urban politics and public administration. Rather than attempting a general theory of official corruption in local government, the authors present a case study of New York City's response to a severe corruption scandal in the late 1980s. They show how public administration is driven by responses to scandals and attempts to deter them. Ethics reform from the Progressive Era to the present fit into three ideal-typical anticorruption strategies. The authors explain how these strategies have changed over time and focus particularly on the increasing dominance of the crime-control strategy.

MEASURING GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE: COMMENT

Previous article No AccessNOTES AND COMMENTSMEASURING GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE: COMMENTJOHN H. BECKJOHN H. BECK Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by National Tax Journal Volume 43, Number 2June 1990 Published for: The National Tax Association Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/NTJ41788839 Views: 2Total views on this site © 1990 National Tax Association. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Corruption in local government

Corruption in local government