Right to know and Right to speak

Right to Know and Right to Speak, in a Democracy.

              Is right to life includes the opportunity to use all the mental and intellectual faculties and pursue all existential purposes of a person, flourishing with freedom of choices and innovation....   

            And who is the sovereign ....most powerful... whose choices matter ...in a mature democracy..

                Adherence to the highest standards of ethical conduct is inherent in the mission (fundamental purpose) of government organizations. Ethics is the founding principle of public administration where the personal sphere and public sphere are separated ( Perry,2015, Cooper 2012). Public administration Ethics focuses on two values: bureaucratic ethos and democratic ethos ( Pugh,1991).

                       In a democracy the elected representatives and appointed officials work as agents of the public, solely for the well-being of the public ( Eisenhardt, 1989; Gomez-Mejia & Balkin,1992). Agents are compensated for acting in accordance with their Principal’s best interests 

( McColgan,2001).  The public thus have every right to know what each and every one of their agents are doing and agents have a corresponding obligation to satisfy all the needs of the public.

               Shaking and dismantling this foundation of public administration is first and second order corruption, which are events of unethical behavior of people in positions of power serving the public. Second order corruption does more long term harm and thus affects adversely the well-being of more people .

               Agent is not expected to do anything which they can not disclose to their principal. Therefore, if agents do anything which they are unwilling to tell their principal or punish any agent who speaks to the principal about any unethical behavior by any other agent which affects the safety or well-being of the principal, is evil administration.

                 Two instances of administrative evil from the twentieth century include the systematic planning, implementation and perpetuation of the Holocaust by German bureaucrats and the 1986 NASA space shuttle challenger disaster ( Adams and Balfour,2015; Zanetti and adams 2000). Stanley Milgram’s 1963 experiments on obedience also depicts possible  impacts of an evil administration.

                  Principal could demand steps to get information about certain agents, if there is information asymmetry, from other agents in the form of whistle-blowing, through peer to peer supervision. ( Shapiro,2005, Eisenhardt 1989) . Increasing the principal’s access to information by introducing peer to peer monitoring in the form of whistle-blowing mechanisms increase fear of detection of corruption and unethical behavior.

                          

                Research in Public administration has identified 12 causes for corrupt behavior.  Social influences, greed and ego-centrism are the major causes ( Belle & Cantarelli,2017). Promoting practice of democratic ethos such as citizen empowerment, social equity, justice, public interest and benevolence by all public servants would reduce corruption. New public governance arrangements characterized by a decline in nation-state and the rise of market-based governments by outsourcing of basic public administration functions, threaten ethical public organizations (Adams & Balfour 2010). Thus there is an imperative of knowing why and how contracts are made or certain procurement or projects are done; only insiders at the higher levels of administration have the information. If they disclose it to the principal before damage is done, it is in public interest.

                    Pro self – oriented individuals in positions of power care about maximizing their benefits and are not concerned about the outcomes they cause to others. Also greed stems from a perception of inequality where the individual tend to take actions to restore equity ( Adams,1965). Pay differentials and wealth abundance in the environment is addressed by taking big bribes and spend on lavish life at the expense of  public exchequer. Whenever the victim of corruption is not identified by the corrupt administration, the persons in power has no affect-based assessment of harm to any victim ( Yam and Reynolds, 2014; Gino, shu,& Bazerman 2010); sometimes rationalize the unethical behavior as beneficial to others (Gino, Ayal and Ariely 2013).

                         Breaking all the social relations, in-group loyalties and colleagues’ displeasure, reporting internally often is ineffective in checking unethical behavior of fellow-agents. Reporting a wrong doing resulting in no action against the wrong doer, often brings retaliatory actions from the agents having power. The benefactors and accomplices of corruption gang up , against their common threat. Any internal voices of dissent will either be submerged or silenced in administration where second order corruption is endemic. Therefore, in organizations which has not internalized the democratic ethos, effective remedy is to speak to the principal, which has sovereign power. This was the rationale and logic when four judges of the Supreme Court, spoke to the people of the country through mass media in January 2018, when they observed wrong doing inside the system.

                       Constraining or punishing such a conduct of talking to the principal through the mass media, is against the very edifice of democracy and its principles. The citizen who works inside also has a duty while enjoying the fundamental rights, to ensure that the principal is not defrauded by any agents and their well-being and life with dignity are safeguarded, by telling them if there is a harm. Acts of Corruption being criminal offenses, every citizen has a duty to take effective steps to prevent. Only through collective action, erring agents at higher levels can be dissuaded from perpetuating corrupt behavior. 

Jacob Thomas .