Private Gain Research Articles

Ethics and public integrity in space exploration

This paper discusses the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) work to support ethics and public integrity in human space exploration. Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) to protect an organization's reputation has become widespread in the private sector. Government ethics law and practice is integral to a government entity's ERM by managing public sector reputational risk. This activity has also increased on the international plane, as seen by the growth of ethics offices in UN organizations and public international financial institutions. Included in this area are assessments to ensure that public office is not used for private gain, and that external entities are not given inappropriate preferential treatment. NASA has applied rules supporting these precepts to its crew since NASA's inception. The increased focus on public sector ethics principles for human activity in space is important because of the international character of contemporary space exploration. This was anticipated by the 1998 Intergovernmental Agreement for the International Space Station (ISS), which requires a Code of Conduct for the Space Station Crew. Negotiations among the ISS Partners established agreed-upon ethics principles, now codified for the United States in regulations at 14 C.F.R. § 1214.403. Understanding these ethics precepts in an international context requires cross-cultural dialogue. Given NASA's long spaceflight experience, a valuable part of this dialogue is understanding NASA's implementation of these requirements. Accordingly, this paper will explain how NASA addresses these and related issues, including for human spaceflight and crew, as well as the development of U.S. Government ethics law which NASA follows as a U.S. federal agency. Interpreting how the U.S. experience relates constructively to international application involves parsing out which dimensions relate to government ethics requirements that the international partners have integrated into the ISS Crew Code of Conduct, and which relate to other areas of U.S. administrative law. It is also constructive to identify areas where national and/or cultural perspectives may differ. Another reason for heightened focus on ethics is the increasing regularity of long duration human spaceflight. In earlier days of spaceflight astronauts had little time for anything other than mission operations. The increase in inflight personal time and opportunity for personal communications heightens the importance to spacefaring nations of advising on ethics obligations in real time. Through individual and collective action, stakeholders in evolving and future government space exploration will be able to effectively address ethics compliance and reputational risk.

Choosing a public-spirited leader: An experimental investigation of political selection

In this experiment, voters select a leader who can either act in the public interest, i.e. make efficient and equitable policy choices, or act in a corrupt way, i.e. use public funds for private gain. Voters can observe candidates’ pro-social behavior and their score in a cognitive ability test prior to the election, and this fact is known to candidates. Therefore, self-interested candidates have incentives to act in a pro-social manner, i.e. to pretend to be public-spirited leaders. We find that both truly pro-social and egoistic leaders co-exist, but that political selection is ineffective in choosing public-spirited leaders. The main reason is that egoistic candidates strategically pretend to be pro-social to increase their chances of winning the election.

Peers, Politics and the Price of Pepper: Skinner v. the East India Company

AbstractThe case of Thomas Skinner v. the East India Company brought parliament to a standstill in 1668 in a confrontation between the Houses over their respective privileges that lasted nearly two years. There is no doubt that the case was exploited for political advantage by presbyterians anxious to block the passage of a new conventicles act, but that is far from being the whole story. This article examines for the first time the details of the case and reliability of Skinner's claims against the East India Company. It reveals that Thomas Skinner was somewhat of an obsessive fantasist who, far from being a presbyterian sympathiser, was close to the household of James, duke of York. At one stage his daughter was even reputed to be the mother of the ‘pretended’ prince of Wales. It concludes that Skinner was himself an unscrupulous opportunist, eager to exploit political and commercial uncertainty for private gain.

Public Interest and Private Gain in Pakistan

Despite labels like ‘failed state’ or ‘hub of terror’, Pakistan remains a somehow ‘normal’ postcolonial country. While many problems are shared by such nations, Pakistan’s complex journey into the future needs to be better understood. Among specific problems, militancy and terrorism have been mainly presented as resulting from interventions by external actors, blaming others. However, failures in internal management and (mis)-adventurous foreign policies have also led to turmoil, disrupting domestic economic development and slowing the pace of democratisation.Assessing the scope for future developments in Pakistan, this article argues that presently Pakistan’s power elites are still not fully ready to admit having learnt from the country’s past mistakes, repeating the same to secure proclaimed public interests, at the cost of killing many of their own citizens. Yet, while the overall picture remains one of precarity, there is also considerable progress. The final analysis explores how this precarious re-balancing has been achieved and is being maintained, and what this means for the future of Pakistan and South Asia.

Impartiality and the Definition of Corruption

The study of political corruption has been beset by disagreements concerning the exact definition of the term. One definition that has grown increasingly popular in the social-scientific literature in recent years is that proposed by Oskar Kurer and developed by Bo Rothstein: political corruption should be understood as a breach of the norm of impartiality. This article argues that while this definition has intuitive plausibility and while its relative parsimony makes it attractive for cross-cultural social-scientific research, it suffers from a number of the ills attending all attempts to depoliticize inherently political concepts. Not only is the definition insufficient to capture numerous instances of the abuse of the public office for private gain, but it is dangerous insofar as it papers over fundamental disagreements about the nature of the good regime. To insist upon this parsimonious definition of corruption is to foreclose a number of essential questions of political philosophy.

Natural resources and the dynamics of civil war duration and outcome

How do natural resources influence the duration of civil wars? Previous studies argue that resource wealth increases rebels’ motivation for private gain (motivation mechanism) and provides rebel leaders with sufficient funding opportunities to continue their insurrectionary activities (feasibility mechanism), thereby increasing the likelihood of prolonged conflict. While these two mechanisms are very important arguments for explaining the role of natural resources in the continuation of civil wars, there are not enough existing studies that analyze these two mechanisms separately. To examine the two mechanisms, this article introduces three important factors to the analysis: the lootability of natural resources, types of conflict termination, and power balance between government and rebels. Empirically, this article examines the effect of natural resources on conflict duration for the period of 1946–2003, using a competing risk modeling approach. Findings from the quantitative analysis reveal that lootable resources (onshore oil production) are negatively related to the duration of a civil war that ends in rebel victory and positively related to the duration of a civil war that ends in peace agreement when rebels have enough military capability. On the other hand, empirical analysis shows that non-lootable resources (offshore oil production) tend to reduce the duration of a civil war that ends in government victory.

Panel: Federal and State Funding - Shifting Patterns and Changing Strategies

Rising tuition, decreased state funding, and financial pressures are leading to a “death spiral” for public higher education, according to University of Illinois professor Christopher Higgens. In a lecture at Eastern Illinois University earlier this year, Higgens said many taxpayers view higher education as a means to obtain credentials for the job market and view students as interested in the private gain of potential salary. These taxpayers, unfortunately, reject the view of education as a public good.

Institutions, Entrepreneurship, and Corruption

This paper examines the public-interest theory of regulation by exploring the relationship between market activity, regulation, economic freedom and the direction of entrepreneurial efforts. Cross country data on corruption, regulation, and entrepreneurship are employed to determine whether a relationship exists between particular market institutions and unproductive (rent seeking) entrepreneurship as defined by Baumol (1990). We employ data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, the World Bank, and the Economic Freedom of the World Report to examine the relationship between perceived corruption levels, formal institutions, and entrepreneurial activity for 88 countries. Our results indicate evidence of a trade-off between productive, value-creating activities and unproductive, extra-legal uses of public resources for private gain. This trade-off, and the institutions that incentivize it, appear to be especially important in low-to- middle income countries with weak governance mechanisms and limited access to financial resources.

Genomic Justice and Imagined Communities.

In this issue of the Hastings Center Report, Maya Sabatello and Paul Appelbaum explore the assumptions about community embedded in the U.S. Precision Medicine Initiative, which aims to recruit donor-partners who reflect the United States' racial and ethnic diversity. As Sabatello and Appelbaum discuss, the initiative is like other national biobanking efforts in bringing to life an imagined genetic community in need of critical attention, and given the public-private forms of partnership at the heart of the PMI, such efforts could become avenues to deepen existing inequalities rather than to alleviate them. The notion of justice has underwritten debates about genomic medicine, informed consent, citizenship, benefit sharing, and profit making since the first national biobanking project emerged at the dawn of the twenty-first century. In a paradigmatic case, the creation, by an Icelandic company, of the deCODE genomic biobank opened up fierce debates about the proper relationship between public good and private gain and became the first global example of the economic and political implications that imagined genetic communities could have in our shared future. In Mexico, in 2001, the Icelandic case fueled a policy agenda to deal with global health justice and the prospects of a future market-based colonialism predicated on the intimate knowledge of DNA.

Prosecuting the Offence of Misappropriation of Public Funds: An Insight into Cameroon's Special Criminal Court

The fight against the misappropriation of public funds for private gain perpetrated by individuals, especially public servants, enjoys different degrees of commitment by different countries. The enactment of laws and establishment of institutional mechanisms towards this end are partly a reflection of the attainment of such mission and can also be the measure by which such a commitment can be assessed. Rated as one of the most corrupt countries in Africa by the global anti-corruption watchdog, Transparency International, the Republic of Cameroon recently enacted a law that created a Special Criminal Court. This comes as one of the most robust and significant legislative developments in the fight against misappropriation of public funds as its mandate is to bring to justice persons who cause loss of at least 50.000.000 CFA Francs [equivalent to about USD 100.000] relating to misappropriation of public funds and other related offences provided for in the Cameroon Penal Code and International Conventions ratified by Cameroon.’ This paper examines the offence of misappropriation of public funds, and looks at aspects of the Special Criminal Court as provided by the Law that established it as well as supplementary legislation enacted to address specific issues related to the Special Criminal Court as well as the offence for which individuals are prosecuted. As a bold step in fighting and defeating the ‘invisible enemy amongst us’ (that is, corruption), this paper argues that with such an institutional mechanism that has docked numerous top-notch politicians and former cabinet members for trial, it becomes an example to emulate and confirms that corruption can be fought if, and only when, the political will to do so is present. 

Authority, Incentives, and Performance: Evidence from a Chinese Newspaper

Abstract This paper examines how the allocation of authority within an organization affects workers’ incentives and performance, using personnel data from a Chinese newspaper. Relying on an authority change that transferred the right of making editorial decisions from midlevel editors to top editors in four of the eight divisions in the newspaper, I find that the authority change improves reporters’ performance while reducing their activities for private gain and decreases midlevel editors’ journalistic initiative. To reconcile these findings, a synthesis of two theories on authority and incentives—the vertical and the horizontal allocation of authority—is needed.

Domestic Resources Cost Analysis of Small-Scale Beef Cattle Farming at Upstream Area of Benain-Noelmina Watershed, West Timor, East Nusa Tenggara

Abstract The study aims to evaluate the Domestic Resources Cost (DRC) of beef cattle raised either on grazing, or a tethering system of small-scale beef cattle farming. The study was done using a survey method. A total of 120 respondents were selected purposively to consist of 60 farmers applying the grazing system and another 60 farmers applying the tethering system. The parameters measured were socio-economic characteristic, Domestic Resources Cost Ratio (DRCR) and Private Cost Ratio (PCR). Data were analyzed by applying a method of Policy Analysis Matrix (PAM). The result of the study indicated that 87% of those farmers involved in the grazing system and 85% of those involved in tethered beef cattle production, were within the productive age range. In the grazing system, the cattle farmers upstream of Benain-Noelmina watershed area gain the private and social profit levels which is IDR 406,284,-/AU/year and IDR 688,388,-/AU/year, respectively. Further, in the tethering system, the average of private and social profit gain is IDR 855,222,-/AU/year and IDR 1,385,712,-/AU/year, respectively. The small-scale beef cattle farming upstream of Benain-Noelmina watershed has competitive and comparative advantages, indicated by the value of PCR and DRCR which are less than 1. The PCR value was 0.41 in the grazing system and 0.71 on the tethering system; hence, the DRCR of the grazing system was 0.29 and 0.60 of the tethering system.

Choosing a Public-Spirited Leader. An Experimental Investigation of Political Selection

In this experiment, voters select a leader who can either act in the public interest, i.e. make efficient and equitable policy choices, or act in a corrupt way, i.e. use public funds for private gain. Voters can observe candidates’ pro-social behavior and their score in a cognitive ability test prior to the election, and this fact is known to candidates. Therefore, self-interested candidates have incentives to act in a pro-social manner, i.e. to pretend to be public-spirited leaders. We find that both truly pro-social and egoistic leaders co-exist, but that political selection is ineffective in choosing public-spirited leaders. The main reason is that egoistic candidates strategically pretend to be pro-social to increase their chances of winning the election.

Corruption in the Nigerian healthcare system

Corruption is the use of public resources for private gain. This is common in most countries though reduced in some and alarming in others. It affects all sectors of the economy and the healthcare system is not spared. Medical corruption is increasing in countries with high rates of corruption and all healthcare professionals are affected. This is review article on medical corruption in Nigeria with suggestion on how to reduce itKeywords: Healthcare System, Corruption, Healthcare Professional, Medical Care

Diseños experimentales para el estudio de la corrupción: conceptos e investigaciones claves

Corruption is a phenomenon characterized by the use of public resources for private gain. Studying this phenomenon with traditional methods (observational methods) presents many methodological difficulties (spurious results, for example). In order to address this situation, since the early 2000s studies have been developing and using experimental designs that have a set of advantages over traditional designs. In the literature, we find that there are three main experimental designs used in the study of this phenomenon: (i) laboratory experimental design (laboratory experiment); (ii) field experimental design (field experiment); and (iii) survey experimental design (survey experiment). This article aims to describe each of these experimental designs used in the study of corruption, their utility according to the research questions, and along with this we describe the main studies developed by leading researchers in this field.

Ecological Civilization and the New Enlightenment

Ecological Civilization and the New Enlightenment

Dogs of War or Jackals of Terror? Foreign Fighters and Mercenaries in International Law

The threat of “blowback” from foreign fighters, unaffiliated volunteers who join an insurgency in a distant land, has led states to explore a variety of normative mechanisms. Among these is the international legal regime applicable to mercenaries. This short paper considers the evolution of mercenarism and the efforts to regulate it. Attempts to fit foreign fighters into that normative category are unlikely to succeed. In part this is due to the question of motivation, which is central to most definitions of mercenary and focuses on private gain. But it is also linked to the reasons for regulation in the first place: mercenaries are seen as threats in the states to which they travel, while foreign fighters are primarily deemed threats by the states to which they might return.

Corruption and First Nations in Canada

ABSTRACTCorruption, defined as the “abuse of entrusted power for private gain,” is recurrent in Canadian First Nations communities. Typical phenomena include embezzlement, nepotistic hiring practices, conflict of interest in business dealings and overpayment of office-holders. The causes are structural: small size of communities, leading to lack of expertise in public administration; intermingling of governmental and business functions; dominance of First Nations governments over civil society; and absence of taxation with attendant lack of concern for economy in band governance. Because these structural factors are virtually impossible to change except in the very long run, the best prospect for reform is greater transparency in First Nations financial administration. The previous Conservative government passed legislation designed to achieve this, but it seems likely that the current Liberal government will weaken or even repeal this legislation. If so, it would be highly desirable to find other mechanisms for transparency, such as a First Nations Auditor General.

In the Cesspool of Corruption: The Challenges of National Development and the Dilemma of Anti-Graft Agencies in Nigeria

Most theoretical and analytical discourse on national development identified the virulent nature of corruption as development curse. In Nigeria, as in many other soft states, the epidemic nature of corruption and its destructive impacts on the national development has received wider attention in both national and international mass media. Similarly, scholarly literature on the culture of sleaze in many of these countries revealed the depth of the disease. Nigeria, undoubtedly remain at the front page of countries under the siege of sleaze. Its profile as one of the most corrupt nations feeds largely into the crisis of its national development. Conceptually and theoretically, corruption encompassed very distinct social problems of mismanagement of public resources, weak and dysfunctional government institutions, complex relationships between political actors and public moral and economic assets. Indeed, the curse of corruption has assumed more than tantalizingly simple act of sleaze but a clear, complex and contested reality of national underdevelopment. It explains to a large extent the abuse of public power and misuse of entrusted power for private gain in the context of attaining national development. In this paper therefore, a continuation of the literature on corruption that espouses the interplay between the culture of greedy sleaze and national development is given bolder attention. The paper analyses a broad understandings of corruption from the analytical usefulness of an effective national development imperative. It further explains the interventionist roles of the ambitious anti-graft agencies and their contemporary challenges.

All in the family: State capture in Tunisia

We examine the relationship between entry regulation and the business interests of former President Ben Ali's family using firm-level data from Tunisia. Connected firms account for a disproportionate share of aggregate employment, output and profits, especially in sectors subject to authorization and restrictions on FDI. Quantile regressions show that profit and market share premia from being connected increase along the firm-size distribution, especially in highly regulated sectors. These patterns are partly explained by Ben Ali's relatives sorting into the most profitable sectors. The market shares of connected firms are positively correlated with exit and concentration rates in highly regulated sectors. Although causality is difficult to establish, the results are consistent with the hypothesis that the Ben Ali clan abused entry regulation for private gain at the expense of reduced competition.