Public integrity and trust in the State: a good investment
By: Paulius Yamin*
The fight against corruption has been and continues to be a major area of improvement to ensure the continuous development of Lithuania. Just this year we learned of an alleged bribe network in some of the country’s highest judicial instances, which adds to the list of corruption scandals involving private companies, State institutions and political parties in previous years. But as discouraging as these cases are, they also show why the importance of public integrity goes far beyond the potential loss of public resources (monetary and others). Public integrity is essential because it is also linked with a factor that can have an even bigger impact in the general functioning of democracy: the trust that citizens have in the State.
Public integrity, according to the OECD, is following ethical values and norms that privilege the public good over private interests. But despite the progress that Lithuania has made in both preventive and control dimensions of the problem (including for example the work of the governmental agency Specialiųjų tyrimų tarnyba and the NGO Transparency International Lithuania), increasing public integrity and trust in the State is still one of the most important challenges our country faces. As much as 93% of Lithuanians think corruption is widespread in our country (the EU average is 68%) and 80% think corruption cases are not pursued sufficiently, while both the Eurobarometer (2017) and the Corruption Perception Index (2018) place us among the countries with the highest perception of corruption in the European Union.
People's perceptions of key elements of public integrity such as inefficiency (waste of public resources), corruption (theft of public resources) and the quality of services that citizens receive are closely related to the levels of trust in the State. In our country, only 35% of people trust the government (compared to 64% that trust the European Union, one of the highest results). Unfortunately for this, media reports are much more interested in the few individuals that engage in corruption than in the thousands of public servants that work every day in hospitals, schools, police stations and offices to make our lives better all over Lithuania.
Fostering public integrity and trust in the state is not only good in theory: it is also a good investment. Without them, any goal the government achieves will be outweighed by the long-term social damage created by corruption and lack of trust in the State. Apart from the direct effects that corruption has on citizens’ human rights, studies have shown that levels of trust in the State are linked to the general perceived legitimacy of the State’s actions, the willingness to pay taxes, the behaviour of markets, and even the general efficacy of public policies (especially those that require citizen engagement and compliance).
But despite what the cases of corruption advertised in the media seem to suggest, unethical behaviour is not committed by people who are intrinsically bad or who only fear heavy fines or jail. Psychological research has shown that, in fact, the vast majority of people consider themselves to be honest and good in general, but they also frequently use justifications to break the rules and make a profit (like when we say "I had no other choice", "I did it for my children" or "everyone else does it"). Emotions, moral principles and the desire to maintain the image that others have of us matter a great deal as well, sometimes even more than the fear of fines or jail sentences.
Because of this, although traditional measures of control and punishment are important, they are not enough. As those of us who have worked in the public service easily recognize, having good laws, technical instruments and sanctions is necessary, but it does not always guarantee real transformations in the beliefs and behaviours of public servants and citizens.
But if these measures are not enough, what else can be done? Well, for starters, it might help to remember that sustainable changes are created from collective movements, not from mandates imposed from above. Changing beliefs and behaviours is not easy. However, as I argued in my previous column, it is not impossible either. As previous research and as our work on driving behaviours at VGTU and the MJJ Fondas is showing, small and low-cost interventions can sustainably change the behaviour of people in real-world contexts, especially when people decide to act together and inspire others to do so. In relation to integrity, psychological research has shown that small actions like reminding people the 10 commandments or adding a picture of eyes in a wall can effectively reduce the percentage of people that behave unethically.
Some practical experiences around the world have understood these ideas, and are trying to leverage findings from the psychological and behavioural sciences to foster public integrity and trust in the State. These interventions are actively engaging institutions, public servants and citizens around collective action processes to transform their everyday beliefs and behaviours.
There are thousands of examples around the world. In Lithuania, excellent initiatives by Transparency International Lithuania, for example, have been successful to reduce cheating among students, to increase transparency in schools, and to reduce medical patient’s willingness to give bribes. Rather than by increasing control and punishments, these results were achieved by involving people: through integrity pledges, participatory budgets, and evaluation of doctors. The CEO of the organization, Sergejus Murajovas, says: “I am pleased that more and more people are seeing transparency as a habit and want to contribute to the setting of good examples. They understand that the key to success is in their own hands and are determined to take the initiative themselves. Especially since such ‘soft’ initiatives do not require new laws, there is much that can be done by people working in the institution”.
As a way of further illustration, here are a few examples I have worked on over the last few years in Colombia, a country with much higher corruption perceptions than Lithuania and with more than 1 million public servants scattered around the country:
1. A public institution. In a National Government Agency in Colombia, public servants of all levels break piñatas that contain bracelets that identify them with institutional values and processes. They also propose, discuss and vote for the most important ethical values of public service in a process that involved more than 25.000 public servants all over the country. And they also create theatrical performances about everyday situations that caused them to fear change and innovation. With innovative interventions such as these, the “Cultural and behavioural change team” of the Colombian Government is trying to transform the beliefs and behaviours of public servants at a national level.
The administrative reform piñata - picture taken by the author
2. An alliance between a public institution and a civic movement. In an office of the Mayor’s Office of Bogotá, a group of public servants enter unexpectedly and distribute fresh flowers with the message “You can do better”. Like this, 400 public servants in 24 different locations all over the city independently designed and applied different interventions. Workshops created jointly by a citizen movement specialized in pedagogical interventions and a local public institution specialized in public integrity taught and provided assistance to those public servants so that they could design and implement behavioural interventions to improve their own workplaces.
Public servants ready to change their organizations - picture taken by the author
3. A group of citizens. In Quibdó, one of the most vulnerable cities of Colombia, a group of university students marched through the city before the local elections and asked people to share images with the hashtag #IWon’tSellMyVote. In just some days, they managed to get hundreds of people from all over the country to send pictures with this hashtag, including several of the most popular candidates, who publicly committed to abstain from buying votes.
Performance by the river - picture by the group “Yo No Vendo Mi Voto - Yo Amo Al Chocó”
Although it is true that these interventions will not achieve large-scale and sustainable transformations without deeper changes in regulatory frameworks and tools, in my experience the opposite is also true. Changes in regulatory frameworks and tools are often ineffective to transform everyday beliefs and behaviours if not coupled with interventions that make possible a tangible engagement with the problem, with the need for a change and with concrete strategies that address psychological and behavioural elements. If we want to change perceptions about public integrity, a key element is to focus these transformations in the areas in which citizens engage more often with the State. Good starting points are the ways in which we report the actions of politicians and public servants (which we hear about mainly through negative scandals in the media) and the quality of procedures and services that citizens receive.
To achieve all that, public servants, politicians, employees and management of private companies, academics, the media and citizens alike must remember that increasing public integrity and a healthy and critical trust in the State to accelerate the development of Lithuania is everyone’s responsibility. That we should not wait for magical solutions from the government. And that we should all act together, but at the same time that we do not need to wait for others to start: we can begin to transform our everyday actions and environments right now, and to inspire others to do the same.
If you are interested in these issues and have ideas to change Lithuania and the world contact me on Twitter @pauliusyamin
* Paulius is a Lithuanian descendant who lives with his Colombian family in Vilnius. He’s an MJJ Fondas Scholar, a Research Fellow at VGTU, a Partner at the Behavioural Lab LT and a PhD Candidate and Researcher at the London School of Economics and Political Science. In the past, he has worked as external consultant for the International Labour Organization (the UN agency in charge of work issues), as Head of the Behavioural and Cultural Team at the Colombian Government, and as research assistant for Antanas Mockus.
Originally published in www.15min.lt