THE ETHICAL CODES OF POLISH PUBLIC OFFICIALS Prof. Dr. habil. Barbara Kudrycka Discussion Papers, No. 8 Local Government and Public Service Reform Initiative OPEN SOCIETY INSTITUTE THE ETHICAL CODES OF POLISH PUBLIC OFFICIALS Prof. Dr. habil. Barbara Kudrycka Discussion Papers, No. 8 Published in 1999 by the Local Government and Public Service Reform Initiative Open Society Institute Nádor utca 11 1051 Budapest Hungary phone: (36-1) 327-3104 fax: (36-1) 327-3105 e-mail: [email protected] listserve: [email protected] www.osi.hu/lgi ISSN 1417-4855 Distributed by the Network of Institutes and Schools of Public Administration in Central and Eastern Europe Hanulova 5/B 840 02 Bratislava 42 Slovakia phone/fax: (421-7) 785-357 e-mail: [email protected] www.nispa.sk Produced by Arktisz Studio Budapest INTRODUCTION TO THE SERIES The development of democratic and effective government at subnational levels remains one of the central tasks of transition in Central and East- ern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The sharing of expertise between countries can contribute significantly to the reform process in the region. Pursuing this goal, the Local Government and Public Service Reform Ini- tiative (LGI) has launched a series of discussion papers, which will be dis- tributed widely throughout Central and Eastern Europe. The series will report the findings of projects supported by LGI and will include papers written by authors who are not LGI grant recipients. LGI offers assistance for the translation of the papers into the national languages of the region. The opinions presented in the papers are those of the authors and do not necessary represent the views of the Local Gov- ernment and Public Service Reform Initiative. Dr. Barbara Kudrycka is Professor of Administrative Law and Public Administration at the University of Bialystok, and Rector of the School of Public Administration, Bialystok, Poland. At Warsaw University she received a Master of Public Administration from the School of Admin- istration and Economy (‘78), a Ph.D. from the School of Law & Pub- lic Administration (‘85) and a Ph.D. habil. in Law and Public Policy from the School of Law & Public Administration (‘95). From 1995 to 1997 she was a NATO Research Fellow, and she is currently a Parlia- mentary Expert with the Office of Research and Expertise. Dr. Kudryc- ka has received scholarships and fellowships in the US and UK, has written extensively on local government and ethics in government and has published three books and over forty studies and special reports. She is a member of Transparency International (Poland) and of the Solidarity Trade Union. Comments can be addressed to the author at: [email protected]. The Ethical Codes of Polish Public Officials In a poorly organized state, the pursuit of private interests by citizens, and particularly by public officials, takes precedence over striving for the common good. In public life, the antithesis of pursuing private interest is the development of the ethics of administration. As the con- verse of corruption in public life, this development concentrates on the individual conduct and legal status of every civil servant, and on the institutional establishment of organizational structures. The growth of the ethics of administration, focused on public issues, is the central point that should stimulate all organizational and functional reform in Central and Eastern Europe. In public life, the antithesis of pursuing private interest is the devel- opment of the ethics of administration. As the converse of corruption in public life, this development concentrates on the individual conduct and legal status of every civil servant, and on the institutional estab- lishment of organizational structures. The ethical image of public officials is a derivative of the ethical image of society itself. Just as the conduct of citizens influences the ethical image of society, the conduct of public officials influences the ethical image of central and local governments. The latter are not mere- ly systems of organizational structures and their formalized links, but living organisms made up of people—with both strengths and weak- nesses—who give a “living” character to these organisms by influenc- ing their dynamics, growth and activity. Under the communist regime, people who held public office in Poland were elected from among Party members and ideological adher- ents. Suitable education, a predisposition towards a given profession and managerial skills were totally irrelevant. The democratic trans- formations that took place in the Republic of Poland altered the appear- ance of public administration and created a new situation for public 1 officials. During the first years of parliamentary democracy, the activ- ity of central and local governments1 was devoted to learning funda- mental democratic skills: the holding of free elections, the development of a party system at the local level and the establishing of direct links between public functionaries and members of the public, as well as between civil servants and politicians. Since 1989, local government in Poland became increasingly stronger, and this process was accompanied by a tremendous growth in the knowledge of civil servants, and in the public’s general aware- ness. The 1998 decentralization reforms had formulated novel chal- lenges addressed to public officials. At the level of the new powiats and voivodeships,2 there emerged a need to involve politicians in the work conducted within representative structures. Furthermore, since Janu- ary 1, 1999, a large group of civil servants has found itself in an unfa- miliar situation: they have become accountable to local politicians. The methods of a system of centralized state administration which empha- sized only regulations, guidelines, instructions and recommendations issued “from above,” have become outdated and irrelevant. Conse- quently, the roles of civil servants must change from being insignificant cogs in a gigantic state machine to that of professionally trained experts who cooperate with and assist politicians in the administration of local issues according to the needs of the community. The new structure of local governments presents new tasks and interdependencies. It also poses new dilemmas with which both politi- cians and civil servants must learn how to deal in order to find their place within the new legislation. Assistance in resolving these issues is provided, not only by the law, but also by an awareness of the ethics of administration. Laws, as set forth in various legislative acts, pro- vide only the general principles of appropriate conduct and assume concrete meaning only through judicial interpretation. The courts, how- ever, only provide those norms with concrete meaning when adjudi- 2 cating upon complaints alleging damages caused by administrative decisions. For this reason, the science of ethics in government may also provide assistance to politicians and civil servants in adapting to diver- gent pressures from various interest groups, superiors, applicants and parliamentarians. Furthermore, for the purposes of public acceptance, the knowledge and effectiveness of government must be reinforced by the trust of cit- izens in their public officials. Society directs increasing attention to the ethical aspects of governance, and civil servants themselves perceive the need for creating a framework which marks the boundaries of the ethical conduct of both politicians and civil servants. As public officials must pay heed to an increasing number of ethical norms governing their activities, it undoubtedly becomes increasingly difficult for them to make decisions. The reasons for this state of affairs are numerous: the temptation of easily obtained private profit and material benefit, the lack of a clear definition of the civil servant’s role, the difficulty often encountered in even recognizing the conflict between private and public interest, etc. The list, of course, could be much longer. A democratic state aims at achieving a correspondence between legal norms and the ethical standards demanded in public life. Those ethi- cal rules which are not accompanied by legal sanctions are guided by the individual intuition of members of society. There is always the pos- sibility, however, of a conflict between legal and ethical norms, as in the case where parliamentarians enjoy immunity from criminal liability, but civic ethics demand that they be punished like other citizens for the commission of criminal acts. For this reason, the goal of those com- mitted to democratic transformation and the elimination of corrupt practices is to reduce the number of discrepancies between legal norms and the ethical standards demanded in public life. The common goal of law and ethics in public life is, after all, the establishing of effective measures which guarantee state rule in the public interest. 3 The aim of ethics in government widely pursued throughout the world is, predominantly, the establishment of workable structural and procedural institutions, which include the development of the adjudi- cation of ethical public issues. In Poland, the new structural institu- tions shaping the ethical infrastructure include: regulations governing the conduct of members of Parliament, as contained in the Code of Deputies’ Ethics; the establishment of a system of government offices— the Head of the Civil Service, for example—which are responsible for developing ethical administrative conduct; the inclusion into the new Constitution of the Polish