The problems encountered by member states in attempting to obtain the consent of their citizens to the ratifi cation of the EU Constitution, and singularly failing to do so in several cases, do not refl ect a simple mistrust of the EU, a misunderstanding of the EU or even a sense of anomie. The problems refl ect all these things and very much more: a complexity of citizen response to refl ect the complexity of the EU. But clearly those who disapprove of the Constitution on the grounds that it advances the process of European integration, of federalism, have missed the point. That process has already advanced to the extent that the EU is a functioning political entity in its own right. National politics take place within that context and the EU’s Constitution would merely have recognized what has become a political, administrative and legal reality. Politics within the EU and indeed within Europe is now Europeanized.
SOME OBSERVATIONS REGARDING ETHICS AND
could in some way ‘erode the public sector’s service ethics and ethos’ always supposing that such a thing exists (Plant, 2003, p. 560). The imposition by governments of a regime of ‘ethical’ dimensions and targets to the policy process for institutions is a way they have sought to address this.
The concept of a public service ethic, allied to ethical behaviour, has its roots in the development of US and European public administrations throughout the nineteenth century, and is closely linked to the (modern) rise of the professions and the delivery of services often mediated through those professions and guided by their adherence to a code of professional ethics;
indeed the very term ‘service’ denotes that the products, the outputs, of the state are deemed to be different to those of commerce and industry (Plant, 2003, p. 561; Massey, 1988). The concepts have always been and remain deeply contested, if not within individual states, then certainly ‘across’ them, refl ecting the different approaches to the concept of the state as discussed in the preceding sections. The concepts of a public good, a public interest and a notion of public service may be traced via Hegel’s The Philosophy of the Right, back to Plato’s Guardians and the belief that the state is a body with a moral purpose (Plant, 2003, pp. 561–2). A summary of the arguments for this perspective, as set out by Plant, distils the characteristics of the traditional public service ethic to be:
1. Motivation: people enter public service to ‘do good’ or to serve their community, not to advance their individual wealth or position.
2. Professionalism: again, this is linked to motivation and is sometimes referred to as a ‘vocation’; the individual is guided by a set of professional values and ethics.
3. Trust: trust is essential for the proper accountability of public offi cials;
they must be trustworthy and the citizenry must be able to endow them with their trust. This is because an effective public sector embodies a degree of political agreement to provide a set of services funded from taxation; thus those involved in the delivery of those services have to be trusted to do so without self-interest and must refl ect broader social and community values to do so. This trust extends further than simply trustworthiness, in that the citizens must be able to trust the state’s offi cials, but so must the government and policy makers generally. As the strategic policy setters for a society, governments must trust that their instructions are lawfully and faithfully carried out. There must also, in this age of governance, be trust between the different partners within the public sector and between the public and private sectors.
4. Impartiality: a part of trust, this notion implies that offi cials will behave without a personal or sectional interest, that is without bias. It is a central tenet of the rule of law.
5. Judgement: this last element, Plant argues, is to fi ll the gap between a rule and its application; the offi cials should apply judgement, or rather good judgement, and act in a just way in order to maximize the public good (summarizing Plant, 2003, pp. 564–5).
If the public sector is believed to emphasize these traits, or at least to aspire to them, then it follows that it is distinguished from the private sector or the world of commerce and business, where profi t, partiality and self-interest are the motivating forces.
To collude in this simple dichotomy would be to set up a straw man and ignore the substantial body of work of the New Right and Public Choice theorists and would therefore be foolish (Buchanan, 1999; Massey, 1993; Plant, 2003, pp. 569–70). The reality is far more complex than the traditional perspective in that there is a multiplicity of motivations for people to seek work in the public sector, and trust, as implied in contracts, remains as it has been since ancient times an essential ingredient of private contracts. Indeed, in many professions such as law and medicine the primary mode of employment is a private contractual agreement between the professional and the client, whether that client is an individual or a state institution purchasing a service on behalf of society. The nature of the public service ethic and public sector ethics, then, must often lie in a difference of emphasis on outputs (in terms of the honest, effi cient, timely, accountable and impartial delivery of services) as well as the ‘inputs’ that go into providing that service in the form of professional ethics and the other traits identifi ed by Plant. When the Public Choice perspective is added to the mix, we can also see the importance of including institutional, indeed legal, mechanisms for constraining bureaucratic and political self-interest, as a way of shoring up the ethical imperative. The problem for European civic society is in identifying the location for these entities if the process of Europeanization and the reality of government through governance mean that multi-level governance is the new political norm. The growth of the voluntary sector and NGOs further complicates the process of identifying where responsibility within the policy process lies (European Policy Forum, 2003; Plant, 2003, pp. 566–7).
Plant begins to address these issues when he argues that the notion of trust be mitigated down into one of confi dence, given that civic society cannot really know if an institution is trustworthy or, given the Public Choice critique, if bureaucrats are entirely (or largely) self-interested (Plant, 2003, pp. 578–9). The belief that we should move to an entirely contractual state (or states) with governments setting the standards and then contracting for delivery within a budget misses the very real differences between the public and private sectors (Massey, 1993) and overlooks the deep fl aws
within the Public Choice perspective (Plant, 2003, p. 579; Hay, 2004). But trust can only really function on a more personal and narrowly focused level; thus Plant’s concept of seeking broad confi dence in the institutions and offi cials that comprise the state is a useful way to proceed in order to understand what is meant by a new public service ethic; it has to be a public sector, and a process of governance, that inspires confi dence. That must mean confi dence in its ability to deliver services to civil society in an honest, transparent, effi cient, timely and accountable manner, and it is precisely the lack of popular belief in this, partly for reasons outlined in the previous sections, that the system of governance engendered by the process of Europeanization suffers a crisis of confi dence.
In groping for a remedy to these ills, there is a growing recognition of the need to develop both value-based ethics and rule- (or law-)based ethics.
That means in order to inspire and build civic confi dence (especially in Europe) there is a need to ensure there is a moral imperative through codes of ethics and the effective training of individuals. The development and production of professionals imbued with a sense of public service, and the training and continuing professional education and development of offi cials are central to this goal. Alongside this is the need for rule-based ethics; this is achieved through the implementation of a regulatory and audit framework, a legal basis of oversight and reporting that results in wrong- doing being detected, the perpetrators punished and grievances redressed in a transparent and timely manner. Both approaches ought to take place to a greater or lesser extent (depending on circumstances) alongside each other and the increased marketization of government services, which provides a competitive alternative to the employment of state offi cials for the provision of public goods. An example of where just such an approach has been attempted, albeit with some mixed success, is the Public Sector Management and Employment Act in Victoria, Australia, although given that this takes place in one sparsely populated state in the Commonwealth of Australia, which is based upon the British Westminster style model of government, this example has a limited (but none the less useful) applicability for the EU (Salway, 2001).
The Australian example has limited applicability as it is taken from a largely politically homogeneous entity. Indeed, although the work of Haynes and Melville Jones demonstrates that in the 1980s the states of Queensland and Western Australia went through ‘an ethical Dark Age’, with a signifi cant number of major political and business scandals (1999, p. 70), the point here is that all concerned knew they were doing wrong and tried to cover it up. Often behaviour considered reprehensible in some regions of Europe is
‘business as usual’ elsewhere. The limitation to Plant’s concept of confi dence begins when we explore the common application of laws, norms and rules:
there is little evidence to suggest it takes place, rather the contrary is the experience of observers. The diffi culties experienced by European countries lie with their heterogeneity; the sheer diversity of polities from ancient kingdoms to recent constructs new to democracy provides the hurdles to a common appreciation or understanding of an uncontested perspective of ethical behaviour. There is no concept, beyond a mere statement of intent from time to time in various treaties and Council minutes, of what is meant by a shared ethical climate, that is what Maesschalck (quoting Victor and Cullen) refers to as the ‘shared perceptions of what is ethically correct behaviour and how ethical issues should be handled’ (2004, p. 2).
The fall of the Santer Commission and the fi ndings of the subsequent investigations, reviews and reports (Massey, 2003) provides eloquent testament to the lack of a shared ethical climate. A comprehensively shared climate, where (or should) it exist(s), includes an understanding of the role of the individual, laws and rules. From this follows a need to establish an uncontested ‘template’ for ‘ethical’ policy making and implementation.
Where there remain contested values, as in the EU and its hinterland, it will prove diffi cult to evolve a common public sector ethic. Without such a common ethical currency it remains diffi cult to foresee a time when the European civic society per se will have broad confi dence in the governance and governing structures. From that it follows that the crisis of confi dence, combined with a corrosive anomie, will continue, with unpredictable results for the whole.