University of Maryland Law School professor Deborah Hellman recently put the draft of her law review article, "Defining Corruption and Constitutionalizing Democracy" (forth. Mich. L. Rev (Vol. 111)), on SSRN. The core argument of her paper is that defining legislative corruption requires a theory of the legislator's role in a democracy. Hellman sets out three such theories, and I add a fourth.

Corrupt Cities: A Practical Guide to Cure and Prevention, a book by Robert Klitgaard, Ronald Maclean-Abaroa, and H. Lindsey Parris (Institute for Contemporary Studies, 2000), is an excellent study and analysis of municipal anti-corruption efforts primarily outside of the United States. Much of what the authors recommend is of use in the U.S., as well.

The great Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes' 2006 novel, The Eagle's Throne, translated from the Spanish by Kristina Cordero, is one of the best political novels I've ever read. I highly recommend it. The novel also happens to contain some great quotes that touch on government ethics. The government may be Mexico's, and national rather than local, but that won't get in the way of enjoying these wonderful quotations, which you'll find by clicking on the post title or book cover.

To commemorate the death of Václav Havel, here are some quotations from his work that are relevant to government ethics:

"The prerequisite for everything political is moral. Politics really should be ethics put into practice."

“Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance.”

Living in the Truth:  "A person who has been seduced by the consumer value system [with] no sense of responsibility for anything higher than his or her own personal survival, is a demoralized person.  The system depends on this demoralization. ... Living in the truth ... is ... an attempt to regain control over one's own sense of responsibility.  In other words, it is clearly a moral act, not only because one must pay so dearly for it, but principally because it is not self-serving ... the representatives of power invariably come to terms with those who live in the truth by persistently ascribing utilitarian motivations to them – a lust for power or fame or wealth – and thus they try, at least, to implicate them in their own world, the world of general demoralization."

Henry Adams' 1880 novel Democracy is a must-read for those interested in government ethics. It's also a first-rate novel, full of wit, excellent writing, and a good portrayal of post-Civil War Washington. It's available free from Project Gutenberg, in six e-book formats.

The climax of the novel is an exchange between the Secretary of the Treasury (Ratcliffe, formerly a senator) and the novel's protagonist (Madeleine), a wealthy widow fascinated with politics. The exchange is all about government ethics. Here are a few wonderful quotations from the novel, including from the climax:

This fourth blog post on Philip Zimbardo's book The Lucifer Effect is a miscellany of various ideas in the book that have relevance to local government ethics.

An Ethics Commission With Lips
Zimbardo raises an interesting thought experiment. What if there were a reverse Milgram authority experiment? In the Milgram experiment, individuals shocked people more and more despite not wanting to, just because an authority figure told them to and said he would take full responsibility. What if authority were used to get people to do more and more good, even if they didn't really want to? What if justifications and role models were used to further compassionate and altruistic behavior?

One of the unfortunate aspects of government ethics programs is that, while ethics commissions are usually given the authority to penalize those who violate the ethics code, they are not given the authority to reward those who withstand the situational forces in order to report ethical misconduct or not indulge in it themselves. Perhaps ethics commissions should be given not only "teeth," but also "lips" to give a metaphorical smooch to those with the courage to stand up to intimidation, resist temptation, and recognize that their loyalty is to the public. A metaphorical smooch would also be in order for those who quickly admit to their misconduct and help the ethics commission, and therefore the public, understand the origins of such misconduct in the unwritten rules of the local government's ethics environment.