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Anton C. Zijderveld
(PhD Professor of Sociology, Erasmus University Rotterdam,
Chair of the Forum of Democratic Development)
The Social and Cultural Conditions
of Integrity
The Global Forum on Fighting Corruption and Safeguarding Integrity
II (The Hague, 28-31 May 2001).
Thesises on the workshop I: Integrity and Governance, sub-session
5.: Democracy and Integrity, May 29th
As the dictionary indicates (in this case The Random House
Dictionary of the English Language), 'integrity' is one of
those words that are rich in various meanings. It is for that
reason hard to define it unambiguously. Yet, its core meaning
is quite clear: integrity is a virtue. That is, the virtue
of a sound adherence to the moral principle of honesty and
uprightness. In principle, although as we will see not always
in reality, no power or influence can impair this virtue.
As such, integrity has a psychological dimension as well.
People driven by integrity have a sound and strong character.
They represent in general, to use an old typology, inner-directed
personalities. Other-directed people walk around with radars,
following the trends of the time. Inner-directed people act,
think and feel primarily in terms of their moral convictions.
Such inner-directed personalities can be hard to deal with,
but they are dependable and worthy of trust, which cannot
be said of the outer-directed personalities.
'Integrity' is also rich in connotations. It comes very close
to the virtue of honesty which can be defined as the presence
of probity and the absence of deceit or fraud. In that sense
it also resembles sincerity as the absence of dissimulation
and deceit. Like honesty and integrity, sincerity has a strong
adherence to truth.
In sum, we can define 'integrity' as the moral virtue which
consists of soundness of and adherence to moral principles
and character. People of integrity are on the whole inner-directed
personalities who are honest and trustworthy. More important
perhaps, they are dependable and, we may add, accountable.
Integrity cannot be impaired, the dictionary claims, by power
or external influence. It is at this point that the sociologist
will distance himself from the dictionary which has the tendency
to focus on a phenomenon like integrity as if it were isolated
from the surrounding society and culture. However, the sociologist
will argue that integrity, like the other virtues, can be
impaired by power. There are, in other words, social and cultural
conditions which exert an external influence on integrity,
and they can do so positively as well as negatively.
Let us examine the negative influences first. To begin with,
integrity is impaired paradoxically when there is too much
and too little social control. For instance, if the ethnic
clan or the extended family demands from an individual in
a powerful position to favor the members of his own clan or
family above others in society, we are inclined to call such
behavior corrupt. To us, corruption excludes integrity. The
problem of this judgment is, of course, that to us Westerners,
living in democratic political circumstance, integrity is
a universal not a particular virtue. Members of an ethnic
clan or a traditional family will define integrity in terms
of their particular, closely knit bonds which exert an exceedingly
strong influence on the behavior of individuals. This is comparable
to the issue of collective versus individual human rights.
To us Westerners, human rights are primarily individual rights,
to many, usually non-democratic societies such rights are
in the first place collective rights. Integrity too is in
non-democratic societies strongly dependent on collective
values, norms and interests. If a person in power in such
a situation, would not favor his own people above others he
would be untrustworthy and unreliable.
However, if there is too little social control, the virtue
of integrity would be impaired also. Take a radically fragmented,
post-modernist society in which individualism runs rampant
and morality is defined in terms of the dictum 'anything goes'.
An inner-directed, at all times honest and morally unwavering
person would be very unreliable and untrustworthy. Post-modernist
conditions, in other words, are not at all conducive to the
virtue of integrity.
Another negative condition is extreme poverty. One need not
be a marxist to realize that poverty is not a happy breeding
ground for moral virtues. This is not to say, that poverty
breeds immoralism which can be defined as an ethos that consciously
destroys moral values and norms. It rather breeds amoralism
which is rather the inability to uphold moral standards and
to live by them. The struggle for survival is so fierce that
one cannot afford, so to say, the luxury of moral values,
norms and virtues. Needless to say that integrity will not
be high on the moral agenda of people who live in poverty
and misery.
If the political structure - that is, the structural division
of power and authority - is dictatorial or tyrannical, we
encounter still another negative condition of integrity. In
such a structure people will be coerced to obey the directives
from above as passively as possible. The inner-directed individual
will be an enemy of the system and (mal)treated accordingly.
The autocratic ruler or the single party will determine what
integrity - honesty, uprightness and trustworthiness - is
and ought to be. It is defined in terms of the political and
material interests of the ruling powers. Again, we Westerners
would call all this a degeneration of integrity.
Here also, the opposite condition - a situation of political
anarchy - would impair the moral virtue of integrity. In a
situation of total liberty no one would be reliable, since
individuals will want to do 'their thing', that is to act,
think and feel as they like. Inner-directedness is transformed
into relentless selfishness which is, of course, the very
opposite of reliability, trustworthiness, dependability, in
short integrity.
We can now turn to the positive conditions of integrity which
can be derived a contrario from the discussed negative conditions.
In order to thrive, integrity as the moral virtue of honesty,
uprightness and trustworthiness, needs a certain level of
economic prosperity combined with a political structure of
democratic institutions. Prosperity is a necessary, yet not
a sufficient condition for integrity. For instance, if one
wants to maintain the integrity of civil servants, their salaries
ought to be in line with the general prosperity of the country,
while the scales of their salaries should be fair. Needless
to add that also the organizational culture in which they
have to function, should be conducive to their dedication
and loyalty. Democracy, structurally embodied in institutions
such as the constitutional state, the checks and balances
of power as in the trias politica of Montesquieu, the local
and national elections, seems to be the most important condition
for a vital integrity within the political system.
But we should add another dimension as well. Moral virtues
emerge from and are constantly fed by what we call these days
the civil society which is the totality of free organizations
and institutions such as the family, the church, the union,
the school, the university, the voluntary associations, etc.
It is in the civil society that people learn to couple individual
rights to social obligations, and individual interests to
collective interests and vice versa. The civil society is
in a sense the training ground for moral virtues and thus
for integrity. If there is no civil society, as in dictatorial
regimes in which societal organizations and cultural institutions
are ruled and dictated by the state and kept in line by the
army and the secret services, integrity will be suffocated,
and inner-directed personalities will be either re-educated
or disposed of. But if there is a civil society of free organizations
and institutions mediating between citizens and the state,
as well as between consumers and producers, moral virtues
will emerge and function as lubricants in the socio-economic
and socio-political machines. There is much discussion these
days about the importance of trust in the worlds of politics
and business. Without trust there are high production costs
in terms of legal contracts and many, many hours of deliberation
and negotiation. Integrity is, as we saw, the moral virtue
of trustworthiness. If there is no trust in society, there
will be no integrity, and the other way about.
We thus arrive at a circular argument which is logically
irritating, but sociologically unavoidable: without democracy
no integrity, without integrity no democracy.
Finally, I admit that I have argued in terms of Western values,
norms and virtues. There was, in other words, a Western bias
at work which discussed integrity as not just an individual
and thus contingent moral virtue, but as a virtue which is
dependent on the conditions of democratic institutions and
a vibrant civil society. Allow me to add two reflections to
this conclusion. First, we Westerners should not use this
Western notion of integrity as a rule of thumb by which we
measure the democratic state of affairs in developing nations.
Just as is the case with the debates on human rights, we should
enter into a permanent dialogue about the desirability and
necessity of integrity as a precondition for economic prosperity
and democratic liberty. Integrity should not be the absolute
norm for moral and political judgments, but rather part of
a larger dream - the dream of freedom, prosperity and happiness.
Second, we Westerners should have a good and sincere look
at the conditions of integrity within our own societies. How
politically healthy are our own democratic institutions and
how vibrant are our civil societies? Individualism has the
tendency to degenerate into selfishness. The traditional organizations
and institutions are no longer the fundamental and taken-for-granted
structures of our lives, and non-committal networks seem to
take over their position in the civil society. The stunning
information and communication technologies transform our civil
societies rapidly, and we still do not know or realize what
all this means for the traditional moral virtues, integrity
in the first place! Virtual reality is a wonderful place to
dwell in. It has no fixed centers or borders. Is this space
of constant flows the breeding ground for new virtues, will
it coerce us to come up with a new definition of integrity?
E-commerce - the new economy - has not wiped out the old economy,
as we have learnt recently. E-culture - the new culture of
a virtual reality - will in all probability not replace the
old civil society and the old civil culture. Yet, we should
be prepared to rethink and maybe reformulate our ideas and
convictions with regard to the traditional moral virtues,
including the virtue of integrity. I, for my part, am not
capable yet for this task, but I thought I should mention
this point at the end of this brief statement.
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