An ‘institution-first’ conception of public integrity

Kirby, N. (2021) An ‘institution-first’ conception of public integrity. British Journal of Political Science, 51(4), pp. 1620-1635. (doi: 10.1017/S000712342000006X)

Abstract

There is an emerging drive to define a new praiseworthy governance goal: a goal that not only implies addressing corruption but going further to establish institutions that are truly worthy of trust. That goal is ‘public integrity’. However, most current accounts of public integrity adopt an ‘officer-first’ approach: defining public integrity primarily as a quality of individual public officers, and only derivatively, if at all, as a quality of public institutions themselves. This article argues that this approach is flawed. Analysing the current debate, it identifies the need to define a role-specific sense of praiseworthy behaviour for public officers. However, it is only possible to define this role-specific sense of praiseworthy behaviour by referring to a public officer's contribution to the overall moral ideal of her institution. Assuming that this ideal itself is a form of public integrity, it then follows that such institutional integrity must be defined ‘first’ in order to then define a public officer's praiseworthy contribution to it second. Substantively, this article argues that ‘public institutional integrity’ is an institution's robust disposition to pursue its purpose efficiently, within the constraints of legitimacy, consistent with its commitments. ‘Public officer integrity’ is the robust disposition of an officer to support the integrity of her institution, within the course of her duties, to the best of her abilities.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Kirby, Dr Nikolas
• Authors: Kirby, N.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences
• Journal Name: British Journal of Political Science
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• ISSN: 0007-1234
• ISSN (Online): 1469-2112
• Published Online: 17 November 2020
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © The Author(s) 2020
• First Published: First published in British Journal of Political Science 51(4):1620-1635
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the publisher copyright policy