By offering an analysis of different conceptions of corruption connected to the political regime and contingency in which they developed, the article retrieves a systemic meaning of political corruption. Through the works of Plato, Aristotle, Polybius and Machiavelli, it reconstructs a dimension of political corruption particular to popular governments and also engages with recent neo-republican and institutionalist attempts at redefining political corruption. The article concludes that we still lack a proper conception of systemic corruption comparable to the one of the (...) Ancients because we are yet unable to account for the role procedures and institutions play in fostering corruption through their normal functioning and what this means for liberal democratic regimes. (shrink)

For nearly half a century John Stuart Mill was a major critic of the forms of electoral corruption prevalent in Victorian England. Yet this political commitment has been largely overlooked by schol...

For nearly half a century John Stuart Mill was a major critic of the forms of electoral corruption prevalent in Victorian England. Yet this political commitment has been largely overlooked by scholars. This article offers the first synoptic account of Mill’s writings against corruption. It argues that Mill’s opposition to corruption was not accidental or temperamental, but sprung from fundamental principles of his political thought. It also shows that Mill’s opposition to electoral corruption put him at odds with other leading (...) liberal thinkers of his era, who thought that the existing ways in which wealth influenced elections had positive effects – or at the very least that they did not impede a healthy electoral contest from taking place. Mill’s fervent intent to eliminate corruption also distinguishes him from many liberal theorists today, who either do not write about electoral corruption, or consider it an issue to be managed and lived-with. Reflecting on Mill’s political thought alongside other liberal thinkers raises the question of whether liberal states can draw a definitive line between prevalent forms of corruption and legitimate modes of political action, and eliminate the former, or whether we must regard corruption as among the constitutive dilemmas of a liberal politics. (shrink)

Why do physicians have financial conflicts of interest? They arise because society expects physicians to act in their patients’ interest, while simultaneously, financial incentives encourage physicians to practice medicine in ways that promote their own interests or those of third parties. Because physicians’ clinical choices, referrals, and prescriptions affect the fortune of third parties, these third parties may offer physicians financial incentives to make income-driven clinical choices. In the past, physicians and scholars typically conceived of conflicts of interest as an (...) ethical issue to be resolved according to individual judgment or professional and organizational norms. However, society can mitigate or eliminate conflicts of interest by changing financial and organizational arrangements in medicine. Conflicts of interest, therefore, are as much matters of public policy and management as individual choices or social norms. (shrink)

ABSTRACTU.S. journalism’s approach to self-regulation is decentralized, inconsistent, and is in some respects ineffective. Exclusive reliance on modern U.S. self-regulation presents several moral problems as it relates to journalism’s contribution as a public good. This article argues that co-regulation—a regulatory method that includes journalists and nonjournalists deliberating on press complaints—is a prospective complementary model to current forms of self-regulation that has had international success. Its inclusion of nonjournalists in press complaints deliberations reduces the potential for conflicts of interest, increases transparency, (...) and by extension reduces vulnerability to institutional corruption as well as other types of institutional failure without compromising press freedom. (shrink)

On the Importance of the Institution and Social Self in a Sociology of Conflicts of Interest Content Type Journal Article Category Case Studies Pages 1-2 DOI 10.1007/s11673-012-9355-1 Authors Christopher Mayes, Rock Ethics Institute, The Pennsylvania State University, 201 Willard Building, University Park, PA 16802-1601, USA Journal Journal of Bioethical Inquiry Online ISSN 1872-4353 Print ISSN 1176-7529.

The paper articulates a new understanding of individual responsibility focused on exercises of agency in reason-giving rather than intentional actions or attitudes towards others. Looking at how agents make sense of their actions, we identify a distinctive but underexplored space for assessing individual responsibility within collective actions. As a case in point, we concentrate on reason-giving for one's own involvement in systemic corruption. We characterize systemic corruption in terms of its public ‘unavowability’ and focus on the redescriptions to which corrupt (...) agents typically resort to vindicate their actions. Through a multidimensional approach to reason-giving, we show that the individual rationalisations these redescriptions point to are necessarily less-than-successful since they keep thedifferent categories of reasons involved in making sense of one’s own conduct misaligned. We argue that this involves a kind of tainted reasoning at the interface between epistemic vice and epistemic disadvantage. We then consider such test cases as self-deception, wilful ignorance, and actions on ‘autopilot’ to show that tainted reasoning is constitutive of systemic corruption, not merely caused by it. On this ground, we expound a new view of responsibility centred on reason-giving as the epistemic core which all responsibility assessments track. To demonstrate the interest of this view, we compare it with existing alternatives revolving around the ideas of accountability and attributability. We conclude by showing how our understanding of responsibility can shed new light on the analysis and normative assessment of an agent’s responsible ignorance. (shrink)