Summer Reading: Corruption and American Politics II - Mark Warren's Essay

The second essay in Corruption and American Politics, a collection edited by Michael A. Genovese and Victoria A. Farrar-Meyers (Cambria, 2011), is by Mark E. Warren, a professor at the University of British Columbia. It asks the question, Is low trust in democratic institutions a problem of corruption?

Warren starts off by noting something that is too often forgotten:  the public's perception matters more in a democracy than in any other form of government. He follows this with two important sentences about the purpose of government ethics:  "A government viewed as corrupt cannot be trusted. And a government that cannot be trusted will be crippled in its capacity to lead."

Lack of Trust
Warren recognizes that one reason citizens do not put their trust in a government that appears untrustworthy is that they don't want to be suckered. It's not just that they're concerned with how their tax dollars are spent. That goes without saying. There are always legitimate concerns about the use of tax dollars, whether more should go on children or seniors, on roads or public transit, etc. And there's always incompetence. Distrust is a more emotional thing, a feeling that one is being taken advantage of by conmen who are secretly fleecing you and your neighbors.

When individuals lack trust in their government, their tendency is to oppose cooperation and collective action in general. People become more risk averse, and this not only undermines economic growth, and support of valuable government programs, but also places more stress on individuals. Trust is a great reliever of stress.

Warren feels, however, that the public's lack of trust does not make sense based on the usual conception of corruption as the abuse of public office for private gain (the conception Johnston uses in this book's first essay). Warren feels that the public's lack of trust is, however, reasonable if you define corruption as duplicitous exclusion, "the secretive or deceptive exclusion of those affected by decisions from influence over those decisions." (See my blog post on Warren's theory of duplicitous exclusion.)

How We Trust
Warren shares some useful perspectives on trust. For example, he writes, "[W]hen I trust a professional, I do so because I am convinced that his identity is so thoroughly formed by the ethics of his office that an abuse of my trust would be inconceivable—as with a member of the clergy or a physician. ... [W]hen I trust a for-profit company, I infer that the company has an interest to promote trust in its brand, without which it would not be able to retain customers."

But do we trust elected or even administrative officials in this way? Do we feel that an abuse of our trust would be inconceivable when they make promises they don't fulfill, when they keep public information closed, when they are inaccessible to ordinary people, and where the equivalent of brand reputation – the city or county's reputation – sometimes appears not to be all that important to them?

And yet there are accountability and other protective structures in local government, including civil service rules that protect administrators from political pressures; conflict of interest rules; transparency rules; checks and balances; and auditors, inspectors general, and ethics commissions and officers. Trust in these, which cannot be taken for granted, better allows citizens to trust their local governments.

Trusteeship
There is one issue where I think Warren got it wrong. He argues that elected officials should be treated differently than administrative officials with respect to their relationship to the public. Administrative officials do, Warren believes, have a trustee relationship with the public, but elected officials do not. "Politics is defined by conflicting interests and values." Yes, but the conflicts he is referring to are aspects of policy, not a matter of wearing two hats or of misusing one's office to help oneself and those with whom one has special relationships.

Citizen Passivity
What bothers Warren is not the existence of ethics laws based on politicians' fiduciary responsibilities. What bothers him is the extent to which ethics laws make citizens passive, when he believes they should actively monitor their representatives and participate in government. He believes that passivity "indirectly empower[s] the corruption of democratic processes."

It's true that if only special interests participate, they will dominate every debate. But there are others who do participate and effectively represent those who are scared away from, lack the confidence or skills to participate in, or just don't consider it a priority to participate in their local government. These others include elected officials, candidates, good government and other civic organizations, newspapers, bloggers, and other media, and gadflies.

When it comes to ethics laws, what is more important, I think, than passivity is ignorance. Few officials, candidates, civic leaders, journalists, bloggers, or gadflies have more than a superficial understanding of government ethics. That is the principal reason I wrote the book Local Government Ethics Programs:  to give these people access to government ethics information. As long as you don't believe that corruption is simply a matter of bad character, then information is an absolutely essential element of any attempt to limit corruption, no matter how you define it.

Trustworthiness and Elections
Warren discusses a study that is news to me. I hope it's not right. It is a 1998 study by Marc Hetherington that "has shown that in the U.S., judgments about trustworthiness of candidates have displaced policy preferences as the most important factor for voters' decisions in presidential elections." What bothers me about this is (1) we can't really know a candidate's trustworthiness; we have far too little information to go on; and (2) trustworthiness is not an all-or-nothing thing; an official can lie about his love life or military service and fulfil his campaign promises and deal responsibly with his conflicts, or vice versa. The fact is that most candidates at the presidential level are the center of a huge PR campaign. Even at the local level, where there is almost no information other than word of mouth, and also less PR, voters have little to go on other than party affiliation and what one sees when the candidate is handing out fliers at the local supermarket.

On the other hand, gauging and discussing someone's trustworthiness is a lot easier and more enjoyable than trying to understand and discuss complex policy issues.

The New Clientelism
Warren notes that officials who earn our confidence for being competent are often the very insiders whose motivations are questionable and, therefore, do not earn our trust. This is why so many politicians try to sell themselves as outsiders. And yet once they've won an election, and they appoint people to head agencies and sit on boards and commission, they often forget the problems that come with being an insider and appoint people who appear to have just the sort of conflicts that so often accompany expertise.

Some candidates go beyond selling themselves as outsiders. They talk about their distrust of government, even while running to lead it. They focus on character (their own) and help increase distrust in government by insisting they can be trusted to prevent the special interests from using tax dollars for their own benefit. Warren calls this the "new clientelism." Clientelism involves someone who not only represents, but provides protection, to members of their ethnic group or neighborhood.

Warren feels that the new clientelism corrupts democracy, because it depoliticizes public judgment by divorcing voting and other expressions of support from positions on issues, and by undermining public deliberation. It is also cynical with respect to collective action. It effectively says that our political system is so damaged that only an individual with a high character can protect people from being taken advantage of.

From a government ethics point of view, such candidates seriously undermine the public's trust in government in order to be elected. Some may very well believe what they say, but they rarely make any effort to improve the system or to increase the public's trust, except in them.

In addition, by personalizing trust, people (sometimes the officials themselves) make private lives and conduct appear more relevant than public conduct. Think of the Clinton and second Bush administrations, and the huge gap between the presidents' private and public conduct.

Good and Bad Distrust
What's most important about Warren's diagnosis is his recognition that there are different kinds of distrust, and that some are better than others. Democracy requires distrust, but the kind of distrust that motivates citizens to monitor their officials. Distrust in political institutions in general leads to disengagement and the breaking of the relationship between citizen and representative.

Warren also says something interesting and valuable about deceit. "[W]here politicians cannot use violence and do not control property or the means of production, deceit is the principle means of coercion. ... deceit is the way in which talk-based politics—the highest and best form of government—degenerates."

Distrust at the Local Level
I think that, at the local level, distrust is more complicated. People often want to trust their community leaders so much that they give them the benefit of the doubt even to the point of not wanting to know what they've done. It's not easy to distrust one's local government. I think that this is one reason so many people ignore local politics and focus instead on national politics. There, distrust is easier, and each citizen has less responsibility for what occurs. Locally, a small group of citizens can make an enormous difference. But it takes work, and the right sort of distrust.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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