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Democracy and Deceit: Regulating Appearances of Corruption
Author(s) -
Warren Mark E.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
american journal of political science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.347
H-Index - 170
eISSN - 1540-5907
pISSN - 0092-5853
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-5907.2006.00176.x
Subject(s) - democracy , politics , representation (politics) , language change , perspective (graphical) , government (linguistics) , inclusion (mineral) , political science , representative democracy , public trust , political corruption , object (grammar) , law and economics , public administration , public relations , law , sociology , social science , art , linguistics , philosophy , literature , artificial intelligence , computer science
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.