Challenging corruption through administrative ethics: a change of paradigm

The issue of ethics — particularly public sector ethics — remains one of the most contentious and also unexplored areas of work in public sector management. In the context of administrative restructurings and reforms of public sector from recent years, ethics need a wider recognition as an important condition for the effective functioning of the state, for ensuring public trust in the government, and creating conditions for good governance. Even though corruption is considered to be at the moment one of the main problem affecting the functioning of the state, there is no consensus regarding the role of ethics infrastructure as a useful tool in preventing corrupt behavior in the public administration. In our paper we provide information on the institutional constraints and the shortcoming related to the enforcement of ethical legislation in Moldova. Resulting from our analysis, although Moldovan legislation on combating corrupt behaviour in the public sector is sufficiently comprehensive, the ethical infrastructure is quite weak and insufficiently developed to drastically change ethical climate within state institutions or to encourage to a large extent civil servants’ conduct. Therefore, the main conclusion of this paper is that although Republic of Moldova has made significant efforts to build and develop an ethics infrastructure, the mechanisms needed for an efficient implementation are lacking or are weakly developed. The ethical legal framework also needs to be re-evaluated in order to provide a better understanding of the role ethics can play in fighting corruption in the public sector of the state. We also emphasize on the idea that the Government needs to develop and inclusive and systematic approach for combating corruption and reforming administrative ethics.