The Limits of Rule Governance

The regulation of integrity in public administration is often (and arguably, increasingly) managed through formal rules, laws and codes. These formalized codes aim to ensure compliance with a minimum standard of integrity – but such codes are less capable of ensuring high standards of integrity (which depend more on a values focus), as opposed to seeking to prevent lapses of integrity. Moreover, if rules-based procedures are overly rigid and prescriptive, they run the risk of alienating public officials and – if taken to extremes – could even pose a threat to public integrity in countries that do not suffer from deep-rooted or systemic corruption in their public administration. Given such risks, it is an open question as to whether the seeming trend towards greater emphasis upon compliance-based approaches to the management of public sector integrity in some developed democracies is an appropriate choice. This paper will use survey data from senior civil servants in various jurisdictions to analyze and assess their perspectives on the management and oversight of national integrity management systems, and evaluate where they perceive the greatest risk of unethical behavior within public administrations.