Conflict of interest in government: Avoiding ethical and conceptual mistakes

Conflict of interest is among the most regulated forms of official behavior. In the United States, the vast bureaucracy of the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) is almost entirely devoted to controlling conflicts of interest. Ethics rules for state agencies and state legislatures are ubiquitous. But this profusion of effort has failed to solve the problem. According to one comprehensive survey, conflict of interest regulations in European countries abound, but “the landscape is highly fragmented [among] various ethics commissions, ethics inspectorates, ethics commissioners, integrity officers… No EU- and national administration is equipped with the necessary resources, skills, and tools to monitor COI in an efficient and effective way” (European Parliament, 2020, pp. 8–9). Surveys show that conflict of interest is a major concern of citizens. There may well be more conflicts of interest now than several decades ago (Cox & Thomas, 2018; Shepherd & You, 2019; Wike et al., 2021). Conflict of interest is among the least well understood of dilemmas of public office. By exposing errors about conflicts of interest, we hope to enable officials to confront these conflicts more honestly, citizens to judge official conflicts of interest more fairly, and regulators to do their job more competently. Conflicts of interest compromise not just integrity and competence but democracy itself. Democratic processes importantly determine the public interest. Democracy requires officials to exercise their judgment to advance that public interest (Boot, 2022). Officials who are not motivated to act in the public interest thus threaten democratic governance. Contrary motivations arise because officials also have their own interests, often coming from their private lives, that may not be compatible with public interests. The juxtaposition of these two kinds of interests—a primary public interest dictated by their official role and a secondary interest influenced by private life—create the tension that is known as conflict of interest.