Abstract
How often are politicians confronted with public allegations of integrity violations? Which types of violations, government levels, and parties do these scandals involve? The Political Integrity Index developed in The Netherlands offers information about the number and types of political integrity scandals in the country since 2013. This article presents a brief overview of the relevant literature on integrity and corruption and on political scandals, with a summary of the conceptual framework and methodology used in our research, as well as some of the results. In the years 2013–2019, 355 political integrity scandals were documented, primarily at the local level of government (79%), involving almost all political parties but with the liberal–conservative People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie [VVD]) most prominent (90 scandals), and containing all types of integrity violations, with as the most prominent type “misconduct in the private sphere” (30%). The topic of integrity scandals involving politicians is relevant but nearly absent in research on public integrity and corruption. This is a challenge and an invitation to researchers in other countries to do comparable research, which might result in a theoretically and practically useful international political integrity index. For that research, the framework of the Political Integrity Index seems useful.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 329-341 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Journal | Public Integrity |
| Volume | 24 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This article builds on our previous work, the PI-Index (until now, only in Dutch; De Koning, 2019a, 2019b), and on books and articles about integrity and the integrity of governance (Huberts, 2014, 2018; Huberts & Van Montfort, 2020; Kaptein, 2014). The original work has been summarized and revised, taking into account recent literature. We acknowledge and very much appreciate the involvement of research assistant Lotte Eising in the presentation of the data for the PI-Index. In addition, we are grateful for the ideas and contributions from many colleagues: participants in the sessions of the Network on Good Governance in The Netherlands, Kay Caldwell, Lex Huberts, and Martha Johnson for their help with the terminology and, of course, the reviewers and editor of this journal.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.
