Topic Guide: Codes of Conduct

A pressing concern for many public institutions around the world is the lack of citizen confidence in their integrity. According to Transparency International’s 2013 Global Corruption Barometer data, public officials are perceived to be the third-most corrupt group after political parties and police. Codes of conduct can help remedy this trust deficit. According to Transparency International's definition, a code of conduct is a "statement of principles and values that establishes a set of expectations and standards for how an organisation, government body, company, affiliated group or individual will behave, including minimal levels of compliance and disciplinary actions for the organisation, its staff and volunteers."[1]

A frequent distinction is made between "aspirational" and "rule-based" codes of conduct.[2] While aspirational codes establish broad ethical principles for employees, they generally do not list prohibited kinds of behaviour or set out sanctions for violations of the code.[3] Rule-based codes are more legalistic, specifying and prohibiting inappropriate behaviours as well as providing enforceable sanctions for contraventions of the code.[4] Whereas aspirational, peer-regulated codes are the norm in the private sector (for example, the United Nations Global Compact), public sector codes are more likely to be rule-based to help enforce compliance.[5] Indeed, adherence to these codes is normally a condition of ongoing employment and can be made legally binding.[6] Good codes of conduct for public officials incorporate aspects of both models into a single document, often broken down into three major sections: general ethical principles, detailed provisions specifying unacceptable behaviour and a regulatory framework laying out enforcement mechanisms.[7]  

Codes of conduct for public officials are becoming increasingly common, and are used to cover a whole range of public servants by tailoring the codes to the specific ethical concerns and challenges the various types of public servants face in the course of their duties. They are particularly useful to regulate the behaviour of civil servants, who often operate independently of legislators due to the need to isolate them from political influence.[8]  

Codes work in a number of useful ways. Firstly, they establish a benchmark to assess officials' behaviour against the values of integrity, honesty, impartiality and objectivity.[9] In this way, they can also limit the pressure that supervisors and political leaders can put on public officials to act contrary to the code. Secondly, given that issues that are technically legal are not necessarily ethical, codes of conduct are valuable as they can provide clarity on ambiguous points.[10] Functioning as general reference guides for officials, they offer guidance on how to deal with ethical dilemmas and outline expected standards of behaviour.[11] Finally, they serve as an overarching integrity management framework by formalising definitions, procedures (such as conflict of interest resolution and asset declaration) and enforcement processes.  

The potential of codes of conduct has been recognised for some time, and an important step was taken in 1996 when the UN General Assembly adopted the International Code of Conduct for Public Officials, and recommended that member states use it to develop their own guidelines. Since then, multilateral initiatives on codes of conduct have proliferated, notably in the United Nations Convention against Corruption (article 8) and the African Union Convention on Combating Corruption (article 7).  

Finally, while codes of conduct are useful components in any public sector integrity system, their mere existence in writing is incapable of guaranteeing propriety in any organisation.[12] Monitoring codes' implementation and enforcing the regulations requires a great deal of political will. Furthermore, as detailed below, strict regulation, prohibition and enforcement should complement rather than replace thorough ethics training for public officials.  

The following sections briefly consider what areas codes of conduct should seek to regulate and briefly examine how to optimise implementation.