Topic Guide: Conflicts of Interest

Despite widespread recognition of the problem of the revolving door, restrictions on public officials' post-employment are not widespread. In the EU, legislators have been reticent to impose specified "cooling off" periods despite a series of incidents in which regulators have left public service to work in the industries they previously monitored.[1] Pre-employment limitations, which prevent former private sector workers from conducting certain tasks in the public sector, are even rarer. They are important, however, in deterring firms from seeking to place staff within government in order to "influence regulations and divert state resources."[2]

  On the surface, the United States seems to have a good integrity management system with regards to regulations on the revolving door. The US Federal Government has ethics codes for public officials limiting both pre and post-employment. It imposes a range of restrictions on former officials' subsequent roles in the private sector, from cooling off periods to outright bans on certain kinds of lobbying.[3] Since 2009, officials in the executive branch have also been banned from working on issues related to former employers or clients for a period of two years after taking office.[4] Moreover, the US Code of Federal Regulation now requires that all public officials do not partake in decisions relating to "any person for whom the employee has, within the last year, served as officer, director, trustee, general partner, agent, attorney, consultant, contractor or employee".[5] Municipal governments, such as New York, Seattle and Los Angeles, have in recent years extended this to local government workers.[6]

Despite all this legislation and regulation, the United States still has a huge problem with the revolving door and undue influence in politics. The US is a prime example of when real change in ethical attitudes lags far behind rhetoric; in the period 2001-2011 alone, 5,400 congressional staffers and 400 former lawmakers left Capitol Hill to become federal lobbyists.[7] For more detail about the lack of progress in Washington, see https://www.opensecrets.org/revolving/