IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/amposc/v50y2006i1p160-174.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Democracy and Deceit: Regulating Appearances of Corruption

Author

Listed:
  • Mark E. Warren

Abstract

While corruption has long been recognized as an appropriate object of regulation, concern with appearances of corruption is of recent origin, coinciding with declining trust in government in the mid‐ to late‐1960s. The reasoning that would support regulations of appearances, however, remains flawed, as it depends upon a “public trust” model of public service that is incomplete and often misplaced when applied to political representatives. The justification for regulating appearances is unambiguous, however, from the perspective of democratic theory. Democratic institutions of representation depend upon the integrity of appearances, not simply because they are an indication of whether political representatives are upholding their public trust, but because they provide the means through which citizens can judge whether, in particular instances, their trust is warranted. Representatives, institutions, and ethics that fail to support public confidence in appearances disempower citizens by denying them the means for inclusion in public judgments. These failures amount to a corruption of democratic processes.

Suggested Citation

  • Mark E. Warren, 2006. "Democracy and Deceit: Regulating Appearances of Corruption," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 50(1), pages 160-174, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:amposc:v:50:y:2006:i:1:p:160-174
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-5907.2006.00176.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2006.00176.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2006.00176.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Martin Fochmann & Björn Jahnke & Andreas Wagener, 2019. "Does the reliability of institutions affect public good contributions? Evidence from a laboratory experiment," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 66(3), pages 434-458, July.
    2. Christian Bjørnskov & Andreas Freytag, 2016. "An offer you can’t refuse: murdering journalists as an enforcement mechanism of corrupt deals," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 167(3), pages 221-243, June.
    3. Ismail Adelopo & Ibrahim Rufai, 2020. "Trust Deficit and Anti-corruption Initiatives," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 163(3), pages 429-449, May.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:amposc:v:50:y:2006:i:1:p:160-174. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1540-5907 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.