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ECPR

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Interpreting Integrity: Culture and Politics in the English Speaking Caribbean

Governance
Corruption
Decision Making
Ethics

Abstract

There have been calls by the academic community for more efforts to conceptualize integrity using empirical works in a range of contexts, and using different methodological and theoretical approaches. Conceptualizing integrity using empirical works can be especially important since the way integrity is conceptualized can improve or hinder the way corruption is understood and may even strengthen or weaken explanations on why anti-corruption efforts tend to be unsuccessful. This study attempts to answer this call by using a case study approach to gather qualitative data on politicians in the Caribbean region. Document analysis will be used to extract valuable data from the autobiographies of eight prominent politicians in the Caribbean region. Also, in-depth interviews with five politicians who served in senior government positions in Trinidad and Tobago between 2010 and 2020, will be used to improve methodological rigor. The study builds on the conceptual framework of moral emotions as posited by Haidt (2001, 2002, 2003) and aims to produce a conceptualization of integrity which reflects the meanings and ideas of the term as expressed by the research participants and the data obtained from the document analysis. The study will also attempt to explore integrity from both an individual level approach and an organizational level approach by incorporating ideas from mainstream sociological theorizing, which attempt to explain the relationship between agency and structure. The study ends by discussing implications of the findings in terms of how integrity and corruption are understood, and in terms of improving our understanding of why anti-corruption measures have been unsuccessful in the Caribbean Region.