Changing Ethics Policies Without Scandal: State Responses to Published Reports and the Importance of Accurate Information

Abstract

This article details how states responded to the State Integrity Investigation-a large-scale study that sought to rank states based on their risk of corruption. Although some states responded with policy changes, the article demonstrates that responses were not due to how well the states performed compared to other states. Rather, their ranks on the survey magnified the effect of prior information on the state's ethics policies. Additionally, it goes on to show flaws in the ranking methods used in the State Integrity Investigation and demonstrates that these ranks likely created inconsistent responses from states with regard to changing ethics policies.

How Political Culture Shapes Horizontal Accountability Outcomes: Evidence from 62 Countries

“…So far, systemic explanations are lacking. For example, Rauh (2016) -in the American context -showed that bad behaviour by elected officials can create changes to oversight, although Schillemans (2008), on the other hand, in the Dutch context, argues that accountability institutions are beholden to hierarchy. Rauh (2021) further shows, in a comparative context, that stochastic shocks generally affect citizens' levels of trust in their government and subsequently demand for greater oversight over the government's use of power -see also Cucciniello et al (2015), and Meijer, Hart, and Worthy (2018).…”

Do Public Corruption Convictions Influence Citizens’ Trust in Government? The Answer Might Not Be a Simple Yes or No

“…PIS data provide the number of federal, state, and local public officials convicted of corruption-related crimes across the states on an annual basis and is accepted within empirical studies that analyze the causes and consequences of public corruption in the United States (Alt & Lassen, 2014; Depken & Lafountain, 2006; Flavin & Ledet, 2013; Liu & Mikesell, 2014; Liu et al, 2017; Meier & Holbrook, 1992; Rauh, 2016). Cordis and Milyo (2016) suggested that the pervasiveness of PIS data is due to their “.…”

“…However, previous studies have interpreted these indicators differently and treated them as objective measures of public corruption across states (Depken & Lafountain, 2006; Flavin & Ledet, 2013; Liu & Mikesell, 2014; Liu et al, 2017; Meier & Holbrook, 1992; Rauh, 2016). For instance, Meier and Holbrook’s (1992) empirical analysis showed that rankings by state convictions matched Americans’ general perceptions of state corruption.…”

“…However, no empirical work has examined the effect of corruption or anticorruption efforts on public trust in government systematically. In the literature, corruption convictions have been perceived exclusively as an objective measure of the corruption level among states (Depken & Lafountain, 2006; Flavin & Ledet, 2013; Liu & Mikesell, 2014; Liu, Moldogaziev, & Mikesell, 2017; Meier & Holbrook, 1992; Rauh, 2016). However, some scholars have suggested that the number of corruption convictions may indicate the prosecutors’ capacities and anticorruption efforts at the state level, because the number of convictions is correlated highly with prosecutors’ resources (Alt & Lassen, 2014).…”

The Effects of Organizational Scandals on the Desirability of Public Organizations as Places to Work: Evidence From the VA Waitlist Scandal

“…The first line of research focuses on inside stories to investigate the main causes of organizational scandals (e.g., Eikenberry et al, 2007;Molina, 2018;Mujkic & Klingner, 2019;Nelson & Afonso, 2019;Patrick et al, 2018;Schneider, 2005). The second line of literature explores the effects of scandals on trust in government and government officials (Bowler & Karp, 2004;Solé-Ollé & Sorribas-Navarro, 2018;Wang, 2016;Zhang & Kim, 2018), government reform (Bozeman & Anderson, 2016;Grimmelikhuijsen & Snijders, 2016;Rauh, 2016), and public financing (Liu & Mikesell, 2019;Liu et al, 2021;Liu et al, 2017). However, despite the attention paid to the external effects of organizational scandals, research on the impact of scandals on government employees has gone virtually unexplored.…”