Description
This volume features a distinguished, international group of scholars and practitioners who provide a comparative account of ethics regulations across four Western democracies: the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Italy. They situate conflict-of-interest regulations within a broader discourse involving democratic theory; identify the structural, political, economic, and cultural factors that have contributed to the development of these regulations over time; and assess the extent to which these efforts have succeeded or failed across and within different branches and systems of government. Collectively, they provide an invaluable survey of the development, function, and impact of conflict-of-interest regimes in public life.
Chapter
Part One: Theoretical Frameworks
ONE Legal Standards and Ethical Norms: Defining the Limits of Conflicts Regulations
Conflicts of Interest in the Public Sector
How Legal Systems Have Dealt with the Problem of Conflict of Interest
Opportunities for the Application of Ethical Standards
TWO The Watergate Effect: Or, Why Is the Ethics Bar Constantly Rising?
Why Is the Ethics Bar Constantly Rising?
Scandals and the Politics of Trust
Policy Learning and Diffusion
Professionalization and Institutionalization
The Shared Limits of Existing Interpretations
Policy Feedback and Political Change: When Effect Becomes Cause
Path Dependence and Self-Reinforcing Processes
THREE Pluralists and Republicans, Rules and Standards: Conflicts of Interest and the California Experience
Pluralism, Republicanism, and Representation
The California Experience
The Limitation of Conflicts Law to Economic Influences on Officials’ Decision Making
The Indeterminate Role of Disclosure
The Preference for Objective Criteria and Rules Rather Than Standards
The Emphasis on an Ex Ante Perspective
The Frontloading of Agency Resources
Across-the-Board Application of Conflicts Law
FOUR A Democratized Conception of Political Ethics
The Usual Suspects and Beyond
Fully Democratizing Political Ethics: Some Initial Features
The Challenge of Essentially Contested Democratic Concepts
Law as a Source of Democratic Commitments
Other Sources of Democratic Commitments
ATripartite Analysis of Judgments of Political Ethics
Unusual Suspects and Unfamiliar Sins
Two Sources of Skepticism
A Concluding Note: The Challenge of Compliance
Part two: Cross-National Case Studies
FIVE Conflict-of-Interest Legislation in the United States: Origins, Evolution, and Inter-Branch Differences
Complexity and Scandal: Factors Driving the Evolution of Conflict-of-Interest Regulations in the United States
Surveying the Conflict-of-Interest Landscape
Employees’ Financial Interests
Receipt of Outside Compensation
Post-Employment Activities
Inter-Branch Differences in the Application of Conflict Regulations
Legislative and Executive Branch Conflict Rules
The Relative Absence of Conflict Rules for the Judiciary
Concluding Observations and Directions for Future Research
SIX Conflict of Interest in Canada
Institutional Factors I: The Importance of Publicly Sourced Conflicts of Interest
Political Factors: The Rise of Privately Sourced Conflicts of Interest
Institutional Factors II: Executive versus Legislative Conflict of Interest
The “Canadian Difference”
Private Payment for Public Acts
Private Gain from Public Office
SEVEN Conflict of Interest in British Public Life
Conflict of Interest as an Issue in the United Kingdom
The Changing Constitutional Context
Strategies for Regulating Conflict of Interest
The Motivational Strategy
Politics versus Probity: Problems of the New Ethics
EIGHT Conflict of Interest in Italy: The Case of a Media Tycoon Who Became Prime Minister (2001–2006)
Why Did Italy Lack a Comprehensive Conflict-of-Interest Regulation?
The Media System in Italy: Collusion between Public and Private
Why Was There a Problem With Berlusconi?
The Parliamentary Debate on Conflict of Interest
NINE Conclusion: Conflict-of-Interest Regulation in Its Institutional Context
Why Is Conflict-of-Interest Regulation So Difficult?
Conflict of Interest and Forms of Democratic Government
Conflict of Interest in Practice: Solutions Appropriate to Specific Roles
Partisanship and Conflict of Interest
Conflict of Interest and the Quality of Democratic Institutions
Conflict of Interest and Public Life
：Cross-National Perspectives
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