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Introduction to the Symposium on Ethics and Integrity in Governance: European Perspectives

This symposium is a confluence of three ongoing shifts in the organizational ethics paradigm. First is the recognition and acceptance that ethics and integrity in governance is an increasingly essential subject of discourse and research worldwide. Scholars throughout the world have begun applying the tools of social science to observe and explain why governance is more effective when those who govern commit themselves to the highest standards of integrity in carrying out the people’s business. Equally important, supranational organizations like the United Nations and the European Union (EU), and numerous international nonprofits like Transparency International have moved aggressively to cast the spotlight of public attention on corruption and unethical governance in developed as well as developing nations. Second is the new European reality of interconnectedness and interdependence resulting from the expansion of the EU and the emergence of new democracies from the breakup of the Soviet Union. These changes have catalyzed the study of ethical governance: definitions that work cross-culturally, how to establish universalized standards, and how to design enforcement mechanisms that supersede a constitutional cornucopia. Third is an expanding awareness by administrative ethics scholars in the United States that their research is inextricably entangled in and enriched by the ethics shifts occurring abroad. These developments, triggered by the innovative work of a study group led by Jeroen Maesschalck (Belgium) and Leo Huberts (Netherlands) at the annual conference of the European Group of Public Administration held in Oeiras, Portugal, in 2003, motivated the editors to bring together papers that could begin to map out European perspectives on ethics and integrity in governance. Toward this end, a call for papers was issued that attracted many excellent papers, of which regrettably only a handful could be included in this symposium issue. The European perspectives offered here are as diverse as the continent itself—there is no single perspective and