In the Netherlands between the 1770s and 1813, a new political vocabulary emerged amid processes of democratization, bureaucratization, and politicization. It included new or at least reemphasized public values and, by extension, helped frame new normative foundations for Dutch administration. As this article shows, these changes were influenced by several important-but generally unexplored-early modern Dutch writers. In addition, it offers ideas to inform future Europe-wide comparative historical research on changing morality and administration.
This article discusses how integrity scandals often amount to setting new norms besides confirming existing ones. Historical research into Dutch integrity scandals shows how integrity acquires meaning in a complex, heterogeneous, and changing environment. Far from being fixed, integrity is a moving target; rather than being simply morally wrong or illegal, actions often fit in a grey area of contestation. Based on integrity's fluidity, four possible lines of action are offered to clarify and resolve lingering difficulties in current (Dutch) integrity management. First, since integrity norms are socially constructed and changeable, they can be actively influenced. Second, there is a need for more prudence to avoid integritism. Third, it seems pertinent to revisit the common reflex to focus on compliance by adding rules. Fourth, there is a need to acknowledge the importance of proactive, democratic debate when establishing integrity norms between important stakeholders.
Although ethics underlying public administration obviously changes over time, it remains largely unknown just how, when, or why this happens. This article presents a study on organizational reform in the system of taxation in Holland around 1748. Comparative use of Max Weber's characteristics of bureaucratization provides a historical perspective on the link between organizational reform and ethical change in public tax administration and also sheds light on other contemporary issues in public management, such as a public-private distinction and the legitimacy of public administration. The case addresses important theoretical questions as well. Do organizations change existing (ethical) ideas or is it actually the other way around? How much do time and sequencing matter when explaining such historical processes? How much strategic action is involved in designing new institutions? I argue how an eclectic institutionalist approach is necessary to answer such questions in general and to increase our understanding of organizational reform in relation to changing ethics in particular, bringing into perspective all too straightforward causal links between the two.
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