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Queensland University of Technology Law and Justice Journal |
RATIONAL AVOIDANCE OF
ACCOUNTABILITY
MARK LAUCHS [*]
Governments across Australia regularly present the public
with new accountability mechanisms. They are often developed reluctantly
but,
when released, presented as proof of the government’s bona fides as an
honest and democratic institution. Nonetheless
the public does not have a very
high level of confidence in their political and executive
institutions.[1] The reasons for this
apparent inconsistency may be numerous but there is one immediate question that
can be asked: Why does the public
still distrust government even though the
amount of accountability regimes is increasing? The simple answers may be that
either the
public is unaware of the good done by these regimes and/or the
regimes do not work. This paper will present a logical argument to
show that it
is advantageous for governments to produce accountability mechanisms but
disadvantageous for these mechanisms to function
effectively.
Anthony
Downs’ public choice theory proposes that every rational person tries to
meet their own desires in preference to those
of others, and that such rational
persons would attempt to obtain these desires in the most efficient manner
possible. This paper
will demonstrate that the application of this theory would
mean that public servants and politicians would perform acts of corruption
and
maladministration in order to efficiently meet their desires. As such action is
unavoidable, political parties must appear to
meet the public demand for
accountability systems, but must not make these systems viable lest they expose
the corruption and maladministration
that would threaten the government’s
chance or re-election. It is, therefore, logical for governments to display a
commitment
to accountability whilst simultaneously ensuring these same systems
would not expose the government’s
flaws.[2]
This paper will
begin by describing the nature of public trust, that is, the relationship
between public officials and the voters
on whose behalf they administer the
government. It will then discuss the components of Downs’ theory of public
choice. The
next section will synthesise the two notions to see how they
interact. Finally, the paper will demonstrate that this interaction
necessarily
leads to a dilemma for political parties in a democracy which requires that they
delude the voters as to the integrity
of their accountability systems.
I PUBLIC TRUST: THE BENEFICIARY-SERVANT RELATIONSHIP
As a consequence of voters placing their trust in public officials, these
officials have a duty to serve the interests of the public.
This section will
explain this duty and the necessity for accountability. For the purposes of this
paper the relationship will be
described as one between beneficiaries and
servants. Public officials, whether they are politicians, statutory officials or
civil
servants, provide services to a class of individuals who thereby become
beneficiaries.
Historically, membership of the beneficiary class varied
with the political system. For example, under an idealised monarchy the king
or
queen is the sole beneficiary, and in an ideal democracy all the enfranchised
adult population are beneficiaries. In British and
Australian history, from the
late middle-ages the growth of Parliamentary representation increased the number
of people who could
claim beneficiary status. This tendency reflected a
broadening of the distribution of power to the community away from concentration
in the hereditary elite.
Generally, beneficiaries were those people in
society who could influence the formation of policy. In British traditional
governance,
the power to make policy was mediated through the convention of
responsible government. Enfranchisement provided a mechanism for
a broader and
broader class of persons to influence public policy through the collective power
to determine who was authorised to
make policy decisions. In the 19th
century a very small proportion of the population was enfranchised. In Australia
enfranchisement
expanded with the extension of voting rights to European males,
and later adult females, and progressively through the 20th century,
non-European adults and in the 1960’s adult Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islanders.
This argument does not mean that the non-enfranchised did not
benefit. The British government always saw itself as serving the British
people.
However, this paper differentiates between beneficiaries and the rest of the
population. The satisfaction of the formers’
interests was the benchmark
of the success of the kingdom/community. The latter had to rely on the
beneficiaries’ prosperity
‘trickling down’ in the form of more
general community wealth, infrastructure, legal rights, and all other benefits
of
civilisation. Historically, the beneficiaries saw their own interests as
being identical to British national interests. Thus meeting
the
beneficiaries’ needs was equivalent to meeting Britain’s needs. The
broader class of British subjects’ needs
were met as an ancillary to the
main project – the advancement of Britain in the community of nations.
Likewise in Australia, the needs of women, non-Europeans and indigenous
people were ancillary to the needs of the colonies, and later,
the nation of
Australia. Their needs would be met through the satisfaction of the political
desires of the majority of male European
voters. The priority of their needs of
the disenfranchised depended on their importance in the lives of the
enfranchised, thus colonists’
female and juvenile family members were more
important to their voting male relatives, and therefore better served, than
indigenous
Australians or non-European migrants.
Servants only have to
provide benefits and serve the interests of the beneficiaries. Thus they only
have an obligation to the voters
and not the un-enfranchised. In a democracy,
public servants are usually members of the beneficiary class. For example, in
colonial
Queensland the entry requirements for a position in the service,
namely, a high level of education and a commitment to the colony,
ensured that
only enfranchised men could become employed. Likewise the salary levels provided
by the service ensured that staff could
meet the property requirements for
enfranchisement.
A public official is in a position of trust that they
will not place their own advantage ahead of the public good. In other words,
in
the course of their official duties, a public official will seek to maximise the
benefits to the voters rather than give preference
to the satisfaction of their
own needs. This situation does not change simply because a servant is also a
beneficiary. Public officials
must ensure that their share in the benefits does
not exceed that associated with their membership of the general class of
beneficiaries.
Voters have placed their trust in public officials to
serve the voters’ interests. How do voters ensure that their trust is
well
placed? The benefiting voters need a means of ensuring that their public
servants not only act in the voters’ interest
but also allow the voters to
judge how well they are served. This knowledge allows voters to seek changes of
policy or process and
even decide to elect a different government. The various
accountability mechanisms developed by governments theoretically provided
that
servants must account to the beneficiaries for the allocation of resources and
fairness of decisions. Note that the government
does not need to account to
adolescents on the nature of policies or services provided. Rather they inform
the voters who decide
on behalf of the non-voting adolescents whether the
service provided is sufficient. There is no obligation on the voters to give
equivalent weight or make account to the unenfranchised for their determination
of the sufficiency of the services provided.
In summary, servants must
serve beneficiaries, and therefore cannot give preference to the satisfaction of
their own needs over those
of the beneficiaries. In a democracy the servants are
usually also beneficiaries, but they still can only meet their own needs to
the
extent that they do not exceed the share determined by their membership of the
beneficiary class. Non-beneficiaries have no direct
claim on the actions of
servants. Finally, the reliability of service is determined through mechanisms
of accountability.
II PUBLIC CHOICE THEORY
In his seminal 1957 work An Economic Theory of
Democracy,[3] Anthony Downs
proposed a rationality of political action based on public choice theory.
Downs’ Public Choice Theory postulated
that rational persons are motivated
primarily by self-interest; while people may be concerned about other people,
they will give
first priority to the satisfaction of their own interests and
only satisfy the needs of others to the extent that such actions will
not
interfere with their own personal goals.
Downs’ hypothesis has two
parts. First, rational people follow a ‘self-interest axiom’ (the
axiom). The axiom states
that rational people will seek their own safety and
happiness even it requires depreciating the safety and happiness of
others.[4] However, many obvious
examples seem to refute this premise, such as parents who sacrifice their own
convenience for the benefit their
children. Although Downs did not claim that a
person would never choose to help a child rather than pursue their own
self-interest,
he simply characterised such behaviour as irrational. It can also
be argued that not everyone acts the same and therefore Downs could
not predict
what action a person will take. However, Downs did not proscribe what action
could be taken, but only provided that whatever
action was chosen, it would only
be rational if it were self-serving.
If the Downs self-interest axiom is
applied to government it will be seen that rational beneficiary would always
demand that their
needs are met in preference to the servant’s needs, the
logic of the beneficiary-servant relationship outlined above. However,
at first
glance the application of the axiom to servants characterises their behaviour as
irrational, as in complying they are placing
the needs of others before their
own. This is true, but servants can be regarded as rational if they are
adequately compensated for
suspending satisfaction of their own needs. Thus,
servants are rational if their remuneration for service provides a greater
benefit
than they would receive had they acted in their own self-interest.
It is possible that a rational public official see a career path in
accommodating the needs of others. Theoretically, a servant could
see greater
personal success emanating from meeting the needs of others. Such a scenario
requires a direct feedback mechanism from
the other person to the servant in
order to allow the rewards to pass between the two. For example, in a
marketplace the customer
can reward good service with repeat business. But there
is no direct feedback mechanism in a large bureaucracy between public official
and voter outside the ballot box. Legally, statutory officials and civil
servants cannot receive rewards from the voters, the recipients
of their
service, other than their salary. The judgement of their success and the
consequent reward is made by their superior. It
is therefore more rational for a
statutory official or civil servant to please their superior than to provide a
better quality service
to the public. While this proposition is feasible, it is
not relevant to the current discussion.
The second element of
Downs’ hypothesis is that in pursuing the self-interest axiom, a rational
person will allocate time and
effort efficiently to produce the greatest benefit
for the least expenditure. In this paper this premise will be referred to as
‘self-interest
efficiency’. Rational beneficiaries achieve their
self-interest efficiency by inducing other persons to produce the service
for
them. In this way, if the financial cost of employing a servant is less than the
value of the benefits obtained, the beneficiary
gains more than they would
otherwise be capable of achieving without the labour of servants. Thus it is
efficient for the beneficiaries
to participate in the relationship.
If
Downs’ hypothesis is applied to servants the result seems to conflict with
the beneficiary-servant relationship. The servant’s
benefit is
remuneration. Downsian logic presumes that a rational servant would allocate the
least time and effort for their remuneration,
thereby exercising the most
efficient means of obtaining their goal. Consequently, a rational servant will
seek to minimise compliance
with the beneficiary’s needs and maximise
compensation.
If Downs is correct, a beneficiary’s desires for the most
benefit for the least expense will conflict with the servant’s
desire for
the greatest compensation for the least time and effort. This conclusion
characterises the recurring issue in bureaucratic
ethics, namely, how does the
beneficiary ensure that they obtain cheapest, best quality service in an
efficient manner? The question
appears to be one of supervision and
accountability. However, the institutional bureaucratic need for servant to
supervise other
servants complicates this theory. Accordingly, this paper
examines how Downs applies his theory to politics.
According to Downs,
the major actors in politics are the political parties, which he saw as behaving
just like individuals. How the
parties will act in any given circumstance is a
function of the axiom and self-interest efficiency. Political parties will try
to
achieve their self-interest goals in preference to helping anyone else, and
will attempt to obtain their goals in the most efficient
manner possible.
Downs wrote that political parties are teams of people unified in their
goal to obtain public office through electoral success. They
are distinct from
the citizenry in so far as most citizens do not belong to such a
team.[5] Parties seek public office
because it will bring income, power and prestige through the ruling
party’s ability to compel others
to comply with its decisions, subject
only to constitutional boundaries. Downs acknowledged that a particular
individual, or even
group, within the team may have a seemingly altruistic goal
that can only be obtained through public office. But, he said, from the
team’s perspective this is a secondary goal for two reasons: first, not
everyone in the team may share this secondary goal;
and second, this goal is
contingent on taking office. For example, a politician’s personal
altruistic goal may be the improvement
of education for the disenfranchised, but
he would recognise that he must join a political party to achieve this goal.
Consequently,
Downs said ‘parties formulate policies in order to win
elections, rather than win elections in order to formulate
policies.’[6]
Having
established that his two basic premises apply in representative democracy, Downs
pointed out that realising the team’s
goal in a democracy, deductively
requires some necessary conclusions. The most important of these for the
purposes of this paper
is as follows: the primary goal of every political party
is re-election, non-extremists receive more votes, therefore parties seek
the
median ground.[7]
It does not
seem logical that the voting public continually would elect people who were
obviously shallow in their outlook. However,
voters are also bound by the axiom
and self-interest efficiency. Downs said voters have no incentive to follow
politics closely.
When it comes to politics, rational self-interest requires
people to always choose the course of action which provides the most utility.
When Downs applied the axiom and self-interest efficiency to the public, he
concluded that the average person, who does not have
a career dependent on
politics, sees relatively little benefit in applying time to following politics.
The benefits received from
government, such as roads, education, safety and
other services, are for the most part unaffected by which party is in office,
and
therefore they are taken for granted.
Downs said voters judge
political parties based on our Utility Income; the aggregate of benefits,
either known or unknown, that each of us receives from the government. A
rational individual will vote
for the party which provides them with the best
perceived utility income in the future. It is important to remember when
considering
courses of action for government that the actual utility income is
only relevant to the extent that the voter is aware of it. For
example, voters
with the personal goal of a safe and comfortable life for their family, who have
good incomes and safe and healthy
families, will regard their needs as met.
These voters will see no benefit is spending time listening to parliamentary
debates, reading
Senate Committee Reports or following party policy contests to
assess the party in power’s
performance.[8]
The combination of the rational self-interest positions of the
political parties and the voters produces the following premises and
conclusion:
political parties seek re-election; most voters do not scrutinise their actions
closely; therefore, political parties
should spend more time trying to look good
than being good.
Political parties can maintain themselves in office
without exceptional performance so long as the voting public does not perceive
that performance as inimical to future utility. Therefore, they do not need to
aspire to exceptional performance to achieve their
goal.
Recall that
Downs was not saying that every politician or voter will act in this manner. He
was simply saying that, all things being
equal, rational actors will comply with
the axiom and self-interest efficiency and that most people behave rationally
most of the
time. In line with Downs, this paper assumes that most people,
regardless of their personal perception of motivation, will behave
as Downs
predicted.
Thus Downs said that under the axiom, rational individuals
will try to fulfil their own desires in preference to, and even to the
detriment
of, the needs of others. Secondly, self-interest efficiency requires that a
rational person will find the most efficient
means to attain their goals.
Consequently, servants will try to do the least work required to obtain their
pay, which conflicts directly
with the desire of beneficiaries that their
servants maximise their productivity for the least cost.
The operation
of the government is in the hands of a third category namely the political
parties. Their goal is attainment of, or
maintenance of, power. As with any
other rational person or body they will seek this goal even to the detriment of
others, and they
will do so in the most efficient manner. Unfortunately the
voting public do not see the analysis of politics as being in their interest
and
do not closely scrutinise the machinations of politics or executive government.
Thus a political party only needs to appear to
be meeting the voters’
needs in order to retain office.
III RATIONAL CORRUPTION
Downs excluded corruption from his thesis because it complicated his
argument.[9] However, this paper
argues that the axiom and self-interest efficiency can explain corruption.
Circumstances will arise in which
it is rational for some holders of public
office to manifest this utility through corruption. Corruption is a probable
outcome if
a rational person is faced with an illegal opportunity to reach their
goal more efficiently than through legal means, and the disutility
of getting
caught appears unlikely. Circumstances of greed, high marginal return and
inadequate compliance enforcement increase the
utility of this
outcome.
Downs explained that the goal of a rational political party is
to obtain and retain office. As the axiom states, they will seek to
meet their
goal in preference to meeting the needs of anyone else, including the
electorate. Under the efficiency principle, they
will also take the path of
least resistance towards that goal. On this basis we can posit the following
hypothetical scenario:
• Party A needs a certain marginal seat to
win government;
• Person B, who has local influence, can guarantee a
sufficient swing of votes to ensure Party A will win;
• B agrees that
Party A will get the votes as long as he is appointed to a highly prestigious,
well paid position on a government
board;
• The press and public
rarely scrutinise the appointment process to boards, thus there is little chance
that the corrupt appointment
will be uncovered;
• Even if it is
exposed, the party in power is very unlikely to lose office because of making a
cronyistic appointment;
• Person B is appointed to the
position.
In the pursuit of their personal utility, some public officials
will give less attention to the duties of their offices than reasonably
necessary or appropriate. The most efficient means of satisfying their self
interest would be to perform the minimum amount of work
that they feasibly
needed to still get paid. While seeking the most efficient path to their goal,
they may determine that the remuneration
for their position can be obtained
without due care and attention to their work. Of course this poor standard could
lead to mismanagement
and negligent harm to others. The utility of following
this path will not be determined by the effect on others, as the axiom states
that the needs of others are secondary to the officials’ own needs. The
only impediment, therefore, to official negligence
is the likelihood of the
servant being caught and punished. A risk assessment will establish the point at
which the likelihood of
detection outweighs the profitability of poor
performance. Following the axiom and self-interest efficiency principle,
rational officials
should reduce the amount of care and effort they put into
their work to the lowest possible level above the breakeven point in this
equation.
Consequently, if Downs is correct, corruption, negligence and
mistakes will occur regularly. Unfortunately for the party in office
if this
tendency becomes public knowledge its re-election chances will be reduced. A
party in power that performs a corrupt or incompetent
action would reduce the
individual voter’s utility income as the benefits have either been
diverted to private interests or
wasted. However, the party in power can rely on
rational voters to pay very little attention to politics. Since voters rely on
perceived
utility income rather than actual performance, corruption, negligence
and mistakes only will impact on the individual voter who is
made aware of the
diversion/waste and injustice. Therefore, if the diversion or waste can be kept
from public knowledge, the party
in office will suffer no detriment in the
pursuit of its goal of re-election.
Therefore, it is in the interest of
an incumbent rational party to keep corrupt, negligent or incompetent incidents
secret. Consequently,
the public cannot rely on the party in power to either
perform its role effectively or keep the public informed of the standards
of
performance. The electorate has two solutions: first, individual voters could
pay more attention to politics. But we have already
established that this course
of action is irrational for most voters, most of the time. Second, they could
demand the establishment
of a system that will disclose corruption, negligence
and incompetence without effort being expended by the individual voters. This
system would require a new set of servants to watch the servants.
These
watchdog servants would need to:
1. Set standards that require the
servants to comply with the beneficiaries’ goals;
2. Supervise the
servants to ensure the maintenance of those standards;
3. Identify those who
comply with, and those who breach, the standards; and
4. Adjust outcome
values through punishment and reward.
It is worth noting that the
original Westminster watchdog process was the separation of powers. Not only
could the independence of
the legislature, executive and judiciary remove the
ability to obtain absolute power, but the legislature could supervise the
performance
of the executive. However, the Westminster, and Australian
Washminster, systems allow the executive to control the legislature, thereby
thwarting any ability of the latter to intervene to correct the behaviour of the
former. Even Her Majesty’s Opposition is not
an effective mechanism to
ensure accountability. Remember that the aim of the Opposition is to obtain and
then retain government.
While a good accountability mechanism would help them
displace the government of the day, it would also hinder its own ability to
retain the treasury benches. Therefore, it is rational for them to appear
concerned about the lack of accountability but not take
action to rectify the
situation when in office.
These steps protect the perceived and actual
future utility of the public but are not rational for the party in office. As
many years
of criminology have shown, it is impossible to eliminate crime.
Assuming the same applies to greed and sloth, then corruption, negligence
and
mistakes will still occur regardless of the system in
place.[10] Any party in power is
faced with the following problem:
• A party has less chance of
re-election if the public is aware of corruption, negligence and
mistakes;
• Corruption, negligence and mistakes are
unavoidable;
• Good accountability will expose corruption, negligence
and mistakes;
• Therefore, a party has a better chance of re-election
if it faces less accountability.
In summary, political parties will
inevitably be faced with incidents of corruption which can seriously endanger
their chance of retaining
office. They need to ensure that the voters do not
know about these indiscretions. The problem for a party in office is that the
public wants accountability to ensure they receive the maximum utility income.
This presents a paradox: the people who can re-elect
a party want that party to
implement the very systems the party rationally avoid to obtain
re-election.
IV MANAGING PERCEPTION
At this point it is necessary to remember that voters react to perceived,
rather than actual, utility income. Therefore, if the party
in office can
convince voters that accountability systems are in place, they will secure
public support for their re-election. However,
if the accountability systems are
weak they will not effectively uncover embarrassing corruption, negligence and
mistakes. But the
public will not accept such a system and the party in office
is still in danger of losing the election. Fortunately for the party
in office
the very accountability systems’ weakness prevents the voters from
knowing: one, that the system is weak; and, consequently,
two, the true extent
of corruption, negligence and mistakes.
The party in office can rely on
the public sector to support, unwittingly, this plan because of the efficiency
principle. Rational
public officials seek to obtain their pay through the least
amount of effort. Meeting ethical standards requires public officials
to work
harder for the same personal utility – so-called ‘compliance
costs’. Therefore rational public officials
avoid compliance with
accountability systems because the additional effort required makes it
inefficient in obtaining personal utility.
Poor compliance means insufficient
information to discover the extent of corruption, negligence or inefficiency
among public employees.
Thus in the same manner as government inactivity
disguises misconduct, public officials’ failure to comply is the best
method
of concealing their own faults.
Thus it is clear that the
self-interest axiom and efficiency principle operate to ensure our system of
government will ensure accountability
mechanisms that are intended to discover
little but are sufficient to convince voters that the party in power is genuine
in its determination
to ensure the public sector acts in the public’s best
interests.
V CONCLUSION
This paper has demonstrated that governments will endeavour to balance a
public perception of being accountable with an actual unaccountable
regime.
Governments are composed of servants, whether public officials or
politicians, who must serve beneficiaries, namely, the voters. Even
though they
are also beneficiaries, as servants the officials and politicians cannot give
preference to the satisfaction of their
own needs over those of the voters. To
ensure they meet this requirement the government must account to the voters on
their actions
and decisions.
Anthony Downs put forward a theory of public
choice that said that rational people abided by two concepts. Firstly, Downs
proposed
an axiom that rational individuals will try to fulfil their own desires
in preference to, and even to the detriment of, the needs
of others. Secondly,
Downs put forward a notion of self-interest efficiency that posited that a
rational person will find the most
efficient means to attain their goals. When
we apply these two concepts to the previous notion of the beneficiary servant
relationship
we reach the following conclusions: 1) public servants will try to
do the least work required to obtain their pay, and 2) beneficiaries
want the
servants to maximise their productivity for the least cost.
Political
parties have a different goal that does not overlap with the interests of voters
and public officials. A rational party
in government wants to maintain power and
will try to do so even to the detriment of others, and in the most efficient
manner. Their
goal is aided because voters do not see the analysis of politics
or executive decision making as being in their interest. Thus a
political party
only needs to appear to be meeting the voters’ needs in order to retain
office.
However, rational individuals within the public service and the
political party will inevitably see the efficiency of corrupt actions
as a means
of attaining their personal goals. If the public becomes aware of this
misconduct the subsequent scandal can seriously
undermine the political party in
power. As the government cannot guarantee that it can prevent misconduct they
must instead try to
ensure that the voters do not know about these
indiscretions. This alternative directly conflicts with the voters’ desire
for
accountability. Fortunately for political parties, the lack of scrutiny
applied to government by rational voters gives the government
an opportunity to
be deceptive. They can create accountability mechanisms that lack substance.
These mechanisms allow the government
to appear accountable without actually
being so. Consequently, if a party in government wishes to maintain its
political power it
is logically obliged to follow this course of
action.
[*] LLB BA(Hons) PhD, Lecturer, School of Justice, QUT
[1] K Turner and M Hogan,
‘Introduction: The Worth of Politics?’ in K Turner and M Hogan
(eds), The Worldly Art of Politics (The Federation Press, 2006) 3.
[2] For ease of reference, the
term ‘bureaucracy’ will be used to refer to an organisation which
administered the provision
of those services usually identified with government.
Likewise, the individuals employed within this sector will be generically
referred
to as ‘public officials’. There will, however, be a
differentiation between the titles of the various services: in the
feudal period
the bureaucracy is the monarch’s ‘household’; in the
18th and 19th centuries it will be called the
‘civil
service’; and it will be called the ‘public service’ after the
introduction of full male, and later
female, suffrage.
[3] A Downs, An Economic Theory
of Democracy (Harper Collins Sydney,
1957).
[4] Ibid
27.
[5] Ibid
25-6.
[6] Ibid
28.
[7] For application to the
Blair Labor Ministry, see M Kenny and M Smith ‘(Mis)understanding
Blair’ (1997) Political Quarterly 220, 224-5. This application has
not been carried through to its logical ends. Specifically it ignores the fact
that people are allowed
to have altruistic ends, under Downs’ theory, as
long as they are not primary ends. The pursuit of unpopular policies by Blair
is
therefore covered by the theory as long as such activity does not interfere with
the primary goal of re-election.
[8] Ian McAllister and Clive
Bean’s work on electoral voting in Australia demonstrates the reliance of
voters on issues which
directly affect their lives rather than those which
demonstrate an injustice and danger to others. See I McAllister and C Bean,
‘Leaders,
the Economy or Iraq? Explaining Voting in the 2004 Australian
Election’ (2006) 25(4) Australian Journal of Politics and History
604; C Bean and I
McAllister, ‘Voting Behaviour: Not an Election of Interest (Rates)’
in M Simms and J Warhurst (eds), Mortgage
Nation: The 2004 Australian Election
(Bentley, API Network, 2005) 319.
[9] Downs, above n 3, 22-3.
In order to reduce the number of variables in the theory, Downs made the
following, in his own words ‘unrealistic’,
assumptions: ‘The
self-interest of each [party member] has at least two limits: (1) he will not
perform illegal acts, such
as taking bribes or using his power to violate the
constitution, and (2) he will not try to benefit himself at the expense of any
other member of his own party team’ (Downs, above n 3, 30). This is
unnecessary for the following paper and will not be discussed.
[10] F Anechiarico and J Jacobs,
The Pursuit of Absolute Integrity: How Corruption Control Makes Government
Ineffective (University of Chicago Press, 1998).
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