The Third Phase

in the Fight
Against Corruption
Implementation and Comparative
Administrative Ethics
JEREMY DAVID POPE
Abstract
The efforts in many countries around the world to counter corruption have been
conspicuously unsuccessful in that they have tended to focus on anti-corruption
commissions and law enforcement as providing the solution and have ignored the
ethical infrastructure of government. This paper discusses how national integrity
systems can be strengthened, how they can be mapped, and how their effectiveness can be assessed. It discusses the ways in which U.S. and European ethicists
can contribute to the building of a better world.
There is a cautionary tale of the economist who was once commissioned to do
a study of Schuberts Unnished Symphony. The economist soon identied a
number of themes in the piece that were repeated, not once, but a number of times.
He concluded that this repetition was inefcient, and had Schubert resisted the
temptation to repeat himself quite so much, the symphony could have nished in
some seven minutes.
This meant, he concluded in triumph, not only that the good Franz Schubert
could have completed his Unnished Symphony before he died, but that he would
even have had time to compose another, as well as to complete at least some of his
numerous abandoned sonatas and string quartets.
An initial conclusion is not that economists, like shoemakers, should stick to
their lasts (though the world would probably be a better place if they did!), but that
outsiders of whatever stripe can be both correct and irrelevant in their judgments
of things they do not understand. I want to come back to Schuberts apparent lack
of progress, and the economists apparent lack of focus, a little later.
The author comes to the topic of ethics not as a scholar but as an activist lawThe author thanks Howard Whitton for assistance with this paper.
Public Integrity, Winter 20078, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 7583.
2008 ASPA. All rights reserved.
ISSN 1099-9922/2008 $9.50 + 0.00.
DOI 10.2753/PIN1099-9922100106

Jeremy David Pope

yerone who has been involved in the anti-corruption movement for the past
decade and more. When we launched Transparency International (TI) in the early
1990s, corruption was emerging as a real and tangible problem requiring attention
by governments, and we argued in favor of strong governmental institutions. This
was in 1993, at a time when institutions, as such, were very much out of favor, and
the only good government was, for many economists, in effect, argued to be no
government at all. Times have changed, and the international community with them.
Institutions are once again the avor of the month, as the Report of the Blair Commission on Africa illustrates.1
The initial diagnosis at TI was based on the institutions that comprise what came
to be called a countrys national integrity systemthe set of integrity institutions
and practices that collectively underwrite a countrys integrity.2 The concept covers
such institutions as the legislature, the executive, the judiciary, the watchdog agencies, the
Systemic corruption, at its root, is
supreme audit institution, the ombudsman,
the corrupt practices of numberless
the privately owned mass media, and civil society (including religious institutions). Alan
individuals perpetrated against
Doig then masterminded a comprehensive
ineffective institutions. This can be
series of country studies. These surveys were
countered by reinforcing the ethical
undertaken largely by local people, and they
infrastructure, in which both public
assessed the state of their institutions.3
sector and private sector ethics are
However, the more TI worked on trying
to
strengthen
those institutions and to implemajor strands.
ment the international standards that we had
helped to createfrequently in alien settings
and where others (including Western corporate interests) were seeking to undermine
themthe greater the consciousness that, at the end of the day, it really does not
matter how strong ones institutions are if the wrong people are inside them.
This led us inexorably into the eld of public sector ethics (and private sector
ethics insofar as corrupt Western exporting corporations were concerned)an area
that curiously is still being virtually ignored by the international development community. For our part, Tiri (the governance-access-learning network) is establishing a
Public Education Integrity Network (PIEN) in partnership with the Central European
University in Budapest.4 As we meet here, the network is meeting in Beijing, sharing
materials and approaches, and dening what is needed to make its work in training
middle-level public sector ofcials more effective.
Some aid donors still prefer to ght corruption by ghting corruptionseeing
anti-corruption commissions as a silver bullet and failing dismally.5 Their in-house
anti-corruption departments also seem to have withered, unable to mainstream their
activities into the projects being funded by their agencies.
So how can dispirited development agencies be persuaded to take on the ethics agenda? To recognize that corruption is unlike AIDSthere can be no single
solution, no inoculation, no combination of drug therapies? Systemic corruption, at
its root, is the corrupt practices of numberless individuals perpetrated against ineffective institutions. This can be countered by reinforcing the ethical infrastructure,
in which both public sector and private sector ethics are major strands.
The anti-corruption agenda has now worked through two of its three stages.
Initially, the taboo against even discussing the topic of corruption in intergovern76

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The Third Phase in the Fight Against Corruption

mental discourse had to be broken. The topic had to be brought out into the open.
Aid agencies, from the World Bank and United Nations Development Programme
downward, had to be converted to a proper understanding. Corruption is not only
a political issue (as had long been claimed by apologists), and so effectively offlimits for diplomatic discourse; it is also a socio-economic phenomenon inicting
disastrous consequences on the developing world, not to mention the agenda of the
aid agencies themselves. This accomplished, in the second phase global standards
needed to be forgedstarting with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) Convention outlawing international bribery as a means to
win and retain business through to the successful completion of the United Nations
Convention Against Corruption.
Item Three is now on the agenda: implementation. Now the rubber must hit the
road. It is the challenge of this third stage that has led a number of us who had been
with Transparency International to establish and work through a new civil society
organization, namely Tiri (making integrity work).6
It seems that in this stage, much higher levels of knowledge and skill are required
if the language of standard setting is to be given real meaning, and if signicant
change is to be effected on the ground. While there will continue to be a signicant
role for a nongovernmental organization (NGOs) to play in the context of building
political will and awareness-raising, sustainable change will only come about if
those in a position to achieve change do so in well-constructed ways, and with a
special focus on countries national integrity systems.
Only last month, with the support of George Soross Open Society Foundation,
Tiri was able to start a process in the former Soviet Union republic of Georgia that
will map the countrys integrity system.7 The process will not assign a score
to a country, or attempt to compare one country with another. Rather it will assess
the extent to which the various integrity institutions are cooperating with each
other, identifying strengths and weaknesses, and enabling reformers to know what
is working, what is not, and whether their programs are meeting with successall
questions that cannot at present be answered convincingly. The assumption is that
if the integrity infrastructure operates more effectively, levels of integrity will rise,
and its corollary, corruption, will fall.
This exercise has the potential signicantly to assist the leaders of reform
efforts in the republic of Georgia and provide them with a means for tracking
the successes of present reforms by repeating the mapping exercise from time
to time. Furthermore, international institutions and donors will be able to focus
more constructively on those institutions that are closest to their economic and
developmental mandates.
The mapping of the existing institutions will assess their performance against a
standard set of good practice functionsexamining why a particular institution was
established, what its mandate is, how effective its performance has been in providing
outputs for other parts of the system, and the performance of other parts of the system
in providing the institution with the inputs envisaged by a coherent system. Such
analysis will lead to conclusions as to whether the current institutions and practices
cover all functions adequately, and thus inform and stimulate further reforms. It will
also highlight progress being made as well as any failures. By repeating the exercise
every three to ve years, the process initiated by this project will also be able to
serve as a continuing stimulus as current reformers move from the scene.
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Jeremy David Pope

The mapping exercise is able to identify institutional conicts of interest (e.g.,

where one institution is responsible for two distinct and ethically contradictory functions), duplication (e.g., when one function is carried out by several institutions), or
omissions (if certain functions are not covered at all or covered inadequately). Most
important, it will track the performance credits (what the institutions are providing to
others within the system) as well as the decits (the extent to which they are failing
to do so). These credits and decits will provide clear signals as to where problems
lie, and the extent or otherwise of the success of a reform program.
This is needed to be able to measure whether integrity standards are being improved in order to know whether what reformers are trying to do makes any sense.
Otherwise, reformers do no better than blindfolded darts players, throwing darts at
a moving board and remaining completely unaware of where their darts are landing
or whether we are just repeating well-worn themes, ad innitum, to a bored and
weary audience.
Ten years ago, Transparency Internationals Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI)
was a powerful and positive advocacy tool, but today it is even a negative when it
comes to assessing the effectiveness of anti-corruption programs. No matter what is
done, a countrys CPI score remains the sameactively disempowering reformers
and eroding their standing by producing gures that insist that nothing is changing
for the better.8 We can map integrity systems for the benet of the citizenry at large,
but we also need to ask whether it possible to develop an index that is altogether different from Transparency Internationals CPIone that actually measures integrity
or values, one that measures progress and improvement.
Researchers to date have failed palpably to come up with a reliable tool to measure corruption, beyond concluding that the phenomenon is probably incapable of
being measured. If experts cannot measure what they think is the problem, have they
dened the problem correctly?
In conversations in emerging democracies and countries in transition, we looked
to draw from the collective trans-Atlantic experience. In some of the countries we
were trying to ll what can only be described as being ethical black holes. For
example, there was the speaker of the Ukrainian parliament (in the Kuchma era!),9
who asked what a conict of interest actually was. This would have been a reasonable
question, perhaps, in a country then emerging from a communist dictatorshipwere
it not for the fact that his parliament had only days earlier enacted a detailed conictof-interest law. The concept was explained to him in simple terms. He then asked
in all innocence, So whats wrong with that?
The story also illustrates how many countries in transition have simply been passing laws drafted for them by Western experts, without a clue as to their purpose, and
doing so simply to placate other members of the international community. The challenge in those countries is for ethicists to bring practice into line with legislation.
It also demonstrates how unhelpful Western countries can benot just by providing self-styled experts but also by providing the unedifying examples we have
seen in such leaders as Tony Blair, George W. Bush, and Silvio Berlusconi. As role
models they are all highly decient. So it is not as though the speaker of the Ukrainian parliament was alone in his ignorance.
Neither side of the trans-Atlantic divide can feel proud of some of the examples
being set. OECD countries can have similar black holes; such as Canada, currently
wrestling with a national scandal over the most elementary form of kickback to a
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political party.10 Conict of interest would seem to be an underexplored theme worth

pursuing further, as the OECD has done in its 2003 Guidelines.11 These examine the
vastly different approaches to conict of interest as between the United States, the
Westminster-system countries, and mainland Europe when it comes to identifying
and dealing effectively with conicts between the private interests of ofcials and
their public duties. It needs to be better understood, especially by ordinary citizens,
journalists, and the commentariat, that much more than straightforward personal
nancial interests warrant the attention of the rule-makers.
A favorite example of the conict-of-interest conundrum comes from Australia,
where a little old lady wrote to the premier to complain about the conduct of a civil
servant, who (on hearing of her complaint) sued her for defamation. She had said
he was a bullyand his response suggested that she may well have been right. The
question was: Is suing a member of the public who has complained permissible?
The answer turned on the institutions involved and the culture of the jurisdiction,
and on what one regarded as being the problem. The government lawyers initially
said he could sue. So did his minister. The civil servant is a citizenthe rule of law
protects him; he has a reputation like anyone elseand if that reputation is defamed,
he has a right to seek a legal remedy.
On the other hand, the Ethics Ofce argued that the civil servant was seeking to enforce a private interest. Doing so would effectively make the matter sub
judicenot only would the citizen be denied her right to complain about him, but
also the ofcials ministry would be prevented from investigating the substance of the
complaint. There was a clear (if somewhat unusual) case of conict of interest. But
the lawyers did not see this initially, much as the economist did not see Schuberts
composition for what it really wasa piece of music, rather than a technical exercise
in the handling of thematic material.
In Nigeria, conict of interest can be a meaningless concept where there is no
identiable and generally accepted public interestbut just a collection of competing
private and group interests, be these tribal, clan, or immediate family.
The task of working in such environments is not an easy one, and only the rash
and reckless would expect quick results. Nevertheless, when my colleagues and
I came to draw from ethics best practice, the gulf between the United States and
Western Europe became immediately apparent. The U.S. approach is encapsulated
in a famous cartoon. A companys ethics adviser is shown addressing his board of
directors: My role, he says, is to draw a line between what is acceptable, and
what is not. And then to get the company as close to that line as possible.
The cartoon seemed perhaps a little unfair until I encountered the government
hospitality rules in Washington, D.C., a few years ago. When a $20 limit on hospitality accorded to ofcials was imposed, there was an immediate rash of $19.99
specials across the capitalfollowed by an animated debate as to whether or not
the limit included the tip! Is not this drawing a line and then getting as close to it
as possible?
Nothing original is said in the observation that in the U.S. private sector, the pursuit of ethics is a quasi-legal endeavor. Ethics is all too often entrusted to the legal
ofce and so is both legalistic and compliance oriented, the more so in the wake of
recent private sector scandals. In the private sector, ethics codes are increasingly
viewed simply as a shield against litigation. Sadly, those self-same lawyers have
little appreciation of just what ethics is really about. Indeed, their training in the
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analysis and interpretation of black-letter law results in a loss of focus, with results
that can puzzle nonlawyers and observers from other traditions.
When it comes to Western Europe, there seems to be in a markedly different
environment. Although who knows? If the litigation culture takes hold on this side
of the Atlantic, the ethics scene here may well shift to that of the United States. In
the meantime, in Western Europe it is clear that ethical conduct is not simply a case
of lawful conduct, though even here, battle can rage.
An ethicist with an international organization based in Western Europe recently
found himself at loggerheads with the lawyers on the staff. The lawyers, schooled in the
A compliance-based approachThe
administrative law traditions of mainland
Low Road, looking for a precedent
Europe, argued, You dont need ethics;
you just need to enforce the law. To those
or a rule to govern every possible
of us who trained in a common law envicircumstanceis never going to get us
ronment, drafting enforceable laws that
there. Individuals need to be able to
could cover every possible situation an
judge competently for themselves what
official might encounter seems as imposis right.
sible today as it has ever been. Perhaps the
2003 UN Convention Against Corruption
can provide a common framework for use by both traditions and so help to
bridge this great divide.
Just as the same deviations are shared, so are the same ethical values. The issue
is not ethics standards as such, but how people can be persuaded to conduct themselves ethically. Some individuals feel themselves accountable to the bathroom
mirror every morningothers, sadly, do not. And it is not as though we are dealing
with societies whose ethical values are much at variance. Europeans looked askance
at the recent crises in corporate America, where a company that presented itself to
the world as being highly ethical and as providing ethical leadership turned out to
be Enron. Yes, Europeans felt it could not happen on their side of the Atlantic, but
before long that complacency was exposed by Elf and Parmalat, among others, even
if the size of the sums to be milked were not quite on the same scale as those
afforded by corporate America.
The personal bias expressed here is clear: an approach that says that ethics is all
about staying well away from the edges, well away from the line between what is
and is not acceptable. A compliance-based approachThe Low Road, looking
for a precedent or a rule to govern every possible circumstanceis never going to
get us there. Individuals need to be able to judge competently for themselves what
is right, or the best of the available options, and likewise what is wrong, or unjustiableand to have the courage to act accordingly.
However, when working in the developing world and in countries in transitionworking in those ethical black holesI was caught in the middle, straddling
the divide. For it could be seen that the U.S. black-letter approach had practical
uses, as it enables answers to be provided to questions that some public servants,
by virtue of their countries recent history, may not even begin to understandfor
example, that public servants should not appoint members of their family to civil
service positions. But as discussed, this approach cannot provide a nite single
answer for every problem. There are times when a person has to do what is right,
and in circumstances that are wholly uniqueand ofcials must have the necessary
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discretionary space in which to make those right decisionsand not cower in fear
of being labeled corrupt when they get it wrong. The pursuit of absolute integrity
is, indeed, a disastrous course for anyone to take.
Given the challenges some of us face, and caught in the divide, we need to know
which approach is the more effective in building ethical administrations in countries
beyond our own regions. We need to know if ethics can be taught at all, or whether
personal ethical frameworks are inculcated quite literally on the knees of the mothers.
If they can be taught rather than inculcated, how do we know that this is so? And
that it is not just a matter of teaching preset answers to set scenarios?
Given, too, the disproportionate number of women who are, quite literally, the
heroes of the struggle against corruptionfrom Norways Eva Joly to Nigerias
Dora Akunyili and to Times three women whistleblowers of 2002we need to
know whether there is a gender element at work as well. Could it be that women,
traditionally cast by their societies as protectors of home and hearth, are instinctively
risk averse and more ethical, while their men, as the traditional hunters, instinctively
court risk as they seek their prey?
Alternatively, could it be that when it comes to the power game, women are
the outsiders and do not appreciate that rules are made by the boys, for the boys,
and to be resorted to only when it suits the boys? Thus heroes such as Britains
Elizabeth Filkina commissioner with oversight of parliamentariansis put to
the sword when she worked diligently to apply the disclosure rules to an evasive
cabinet minister?12 Some researchers certainly suggest gender as a possible theme
for us to ponder.
We are living, too, in a globalizing world, and among processes that have direct
implications for ethical standards. True, the origins of public sector ethics standards
can be traced back past the beginnings of the modern West, through the traditions
of Islam, Rome, Greece, Judaism, early China, and the Sumerians before all of
themand we can now claim to know intuitively that these standards make sense
in most settings. Even in ancient traditional societies, the chiefs were expected to
serve their people, and when they failed to do so they lost either their heads or their
followers to their cousins on the other side of the river.
Yet we have heard the cry of Asian values, and suggestions that ethics in East
Asia are, in some way, differenta proposition with which many Asian ethicists
fervently disagree. In the Caucasus, too, there are those who believe that the region
and its neighbors will forever be in the hands of entrenched family networks, rendering modern governance impossible.
So are the values we seek to protect truly universal, and are they as fundamental to
the human condition as are internationally recognized human rights? If not, how does
this matter? If so, how can these values be institutionalized? Does the UN Convention Against Corruption rest on a rm ethical foundation that is global in its reach?
For surely it can rest securely on nothing else. If not, what can be the futureboth
for the convention and for the ethics of our planet? What is most importantand
which this seminar can addressis how to bridge the apparent ethical divide, not
so much as between the two sides of the Atlantic, but as between the industrialized
and developing worlds.
We live in an age in which building democracies has become a major international preoccupation, yet this is conducted by industrialized countries whose voter
turnouts are nose-diving, and whose own politicians often appear to be bought and
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sold by corrupt lobby interests. Can ethical standards be forged that reinforce the
democracies on either side of the North Atlantic, and so legitimize their efforts to
export democratic ideals? Likewise, can these standards be fashioned in ways that
protect a professional public service from the illicit demands of predatory politicians
despite the fact that independent anti-corruption commissions fail to bite, freedom
of information runs into a legacy of records mismanagement, declarations of assets
by decision-makers are seldom checked, and conicts of interest proliferate?
Determined to play a part in building a secure world by combating poverty and
developing meaningful democracies, we must do more than merely gaze at our own
navels as we ponder the merits of respective systems. This would be no more than to
engage in a vapid repetition of riffs and themes while leaving the work of nishing
the symphony unattended.
Nothing is more clear than that the benets promised to all as the fruits of
globalization will be denied to mostto the worlds most poorif we fail in our
efforts to raise standards of governance worldwide. As we debate the strengths and
weaknesses of ethics and integrity regimes on either side of the Atlantic, look to the
larger task. The world is in crisis, and it is a world that needs you, your talents, and
your insights more than ever before. You can embark on this enterprise, perhaps, if
you think of Schubert, and not of the economist, and if you eschew a preoccupation
with minutiae and pursue the attainment of the larger goal.
NOTES
1. Our Common Interest (March 11, 2005), available at www.commissionforafrica.
org/english/report/introduction.html.
2. See Jeremy Pope, Confronting Corruption: The Elements of a National Integrity
System (Berlin: Transparency International, 2000).
3. These are posted on the Transparency International Web site, www.transparency.
org/surveys/index.html.
4. For details, see http://tiri.org/capacity-building/pien.html.
5. A study on the failure of this policy in Africa by Alan Doig and Jon Moran will
be published shortly on the Web site of the Utstein Group, http://u4.no.
6. Those who left would rather have stayed with Transparency International, but
found its secretariat unwilling to move TIs headquarters agenda forward and address
the third phase, preferring to remain in the less demanding groove of awareness-raising
and exhortation. Tiri has a memorandum of understanding with the Berlin headquarters
of TI, but primarily it cooperates with the more successful national chapters of TI rather
than with its headquarters.
7. For a discussion of the process, see Charles Sampford, Rodney Smith, and A. J.
Brown, From Greek Temple to Birds Nest: Towards a Theory of Coherence and Mutual
Accountability for Integrity Systems, Australian Journal of Public Administration 64,
no. 2 (2005):96108.
8. The inadequacies of the Corruption Perceptions Index are analyzed in Fredrik
Galtung, Measuring the Immeasurable: Boundaries and Functions of (Macro) Indices:
http://tiri.org/metrics-indicators.html. Galtung and the writer left Transparency International after failing to persuade its board and secretariat to tackle the implementation of the
standards it had helped to create, rather than continue indenitely with awareness-raising.
They created Tiri (the governance-access-learning network) (see http://tiri.org).
9. Leonid Kuchma was president of Ukraine from July 19, 1994, to January 23,
2005.
10. For its part, Queensland gave us the minister for everything, as he was known:
Australian state minister Russ Hinze was a major racehorse owner and trainer, owner of

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numerous hotels, and farmer, as well as being minister for transport, minister for racing,
and minister for policewhose function (not by coincidence) included inspection of liquor
licensees. When asked whether he thought he had a conict of interest, he replied: Not
at allthats a convergence, not a conict! Hinze died before he could be prosecuted:
his police commissioner, Sir Terence Lewis, went to jail.
11. OECD Guidelines for Managing Conict of Interest in the Public Service (2003),
www.oecd.org/dataoecd/51/44/35365195.pdf.
12. The Ofce of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards was set up by the
House of Commons in 1995 as a result of recommendations made by the Committee
on Standards in Public Life. The commissioner is appointed by, and is an ofcer of, the
House. Among the commissioners responsibilities are:
Providing advice on a condential basis to individual members and to the Select
Committee on Standards and Privileges about the interpretation of the Code of
Conduct and Guide to the Rules relating to the Conduct of Members.
Preparing guidance and providing training for members on matters of conduct,
propriety, and ethics.
Receiving and investigating complaints about members who are allegedly in breach
of the Code of Conduct and Guide to the Rules, and reporting his ndings to the
committee.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jeremy David Pope is a lawyer. One of the co-founders of Tiri, he previously was director
of legal and constitutional affairs at the Commonwealth Secretariat (London) and founding
managing director of Transparency International (Berlin). He received his LL.B. degree
in 1961 in law from Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand. His books include
Confronting Corruption: The Elements of a National Integrity System (2000).

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