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An individual who was asking me government ethics questions recently became angry when I said that codes of conduct that go beyond conflicts of interest are outside of my field. He said that those who engage in bad conduct will probably also engage in bad ethics. He referred to my exclusive focus on conflicts of interest as "compartmentalization."

This reminded me how important it is to make it clear why government ethics programs deal exclusively with conflicts of interests and...

Old soft money was associated with access, like a wad of cash that you’d slip to a nightclub bouncer to get in the door. The new soft money is more like a bulge in one’s jacket pocket, an implied threat against those who refuse to comply.

—Dan Tokaji and Renata Strause in an Election Law Blog post yesterday that summarizes their new report, "...

The portrayal of lobbying state and, hopefully, a few local officials will soon be in the hands of Lawrence Wright, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 and, most recently, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief.

But the portrayal will not be in the form of a book. According to ...

In 2012, Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown signed a People's Pledge in their U.S. senatorial race in Massachusetts. The candidates agreed to donate to a charity of the other candidate's choice a sum equal to 50% of any advertisement run by any outside group or PAC. The goal was to let the candidates control their own race and to prevent outside groups from changing the nature of the race, especially by running negative ads, as they tend to do. The pledge was successful because, as the candidates...

Thinking in terms of risk is a great way not to take responsibility for your actions, including your inactions. As soon as you start thinking about the chances that, overall, you might win or lose from a transaction, you have begun thinking in terms of your personal interest. This makes it very difficult to think in terms of the public interest.

You have also begun thinking in terms of consequences rather than in terms of rules. And it is rules, not consequences, that underlie the...

According to an article this week in Governing magazine, a report in Public Administration Review found that "more corrupt states tended to spend money on construction, highways, and police protection programs, which provide more opportunity for corrupt officials to use public money for their own gain. These states spend less on health, education, and welfare, which...