The Opposite of Political Corruption: A Publicity-Based Account

A vast scholarly attention has recently been devoted to the normative characterization of corrupt public officials and institutions. However, a high degree of uncertainty remains about what the opposite of political corruption is. In the first part of the paper, I critically engage with two popular candidate normative ideals that have been called upon to characterize a non-corrupt public order: impartiality (Rothstein & Varraich 2017) and integrity (Lessig 2013). I show that these ideals offer either an underdetermined and unspecific or too restricted and idealized account of the features of non-corrupt public officials or institutions. I present an alternative publicity-based account. In this account, a non-corrupt public order is one where the rationale of the uses made of the power associated with institutional roles may be publicly vindicated as a reason for public action, in keeping with the mandate with which any such power was constituted. In the second part of the paper, I show the merits and the implications of this account of the opposite of political corruption for the development of anti-corruption policies. In particular, I concentrate on the regulation of whistleblowing – the practice of reporting immoral or illegal behavior by members of a legitimate organization with privileged access to information concerning an alleged wrongdoing within that organization. I argue that from my publicity-based perspective, this anti-corruption practice is fully justified both inherently and instrumentally. I also show that from this normative account important implications follow for the practical regulation of whistleblowing, its protection and promotion, as well as its status as either an institutional or individual duty.