Corruption, the 'Common Good' and the emergence of the 'Public Service Ethos' in western Europe in the nineteenth century

理性西欧被广泛认为是一个现代文化和政治变化导致国家在公共生活和治理方面经常受到高度评价的国家比例异常高，而对行政官员腐败行为的容忍度较低的地区。由透明国际编制的2018年清廉指数显示，12个西欧国家跻身最廉洁的20个国家之列。该项目旨在探讨1820年至1900年期间西欧公民生活中的反腐败运动对区域和国际的影响。我的初步研究显示，在打击19世纪初欧洲国家官僚腐败行为的努力中，政策制定者、管理者与当代评论员和记者之间进行了大量沟通。该项目旨在为19世纪欧洲历史研究人员、政治学家、政策制定者、智囊团和游说团体之间的知识交流开发一个跨学科论坛。继2019年1月在牛津成功举办了一次国际研讨会后，该项目由英国科学院的新星参与奖计划资助，现在该项目寻求在欧洲各地举办类似的活动，以促进学者和政策制定者之间的进一步合作，共同应对研究挑战，并在历史学家和政治学家之间驾驭往往不同的方法论传统。研究背景致力于英国反腐败运动的历史学家迄今倾向于关注三个问题：1832年之前英国的反旧(或政治腐败)运动；1854年2月的Northcote-Trevelyan报告的影响；19世纪末地方政府的腐败及其消除。行政管理中的“公共服务精神”的概念直到最近才引起历史的关注，与以前一样，对公共机构的研究只是强调19世纪英国公共服务的日益“专业性”，好像公务员所要求的行为是不受价值的、无可争辩的。然而，在英国--如果不是在欧洲--历史学中，个别公职人员之间的返祖和自私行为被弗兰克·卡尔和约翰·吉林所说的“一套无形的价值观”所取代的过程仍然被严重忽视。然而，政治报刊和通俗文学在当时促进商定的公共行为标准方面发挥了重要作用，通过对新闻和印刷文化的研究，可以分析日益增长的公共服务文化及其推广，重点是对19世纪初腐败丑闻的反应，而对19世纪中期文学的研究可以提供证据，说明这些文化价值观是如何嵌入公共和公民心态的。《中央政府腐败史》(牛津，2003)和R.Kroeze等人(主编)《历史上的反腐：从古代到现代》(牛津，2017)表明，在英国以外，特别是斯堪的纳维亚国家，在国家一级的行政当局的文化改革方面已经做了很多工作，但关于知识、政治和文化交流如何有助于解释这一时期整个西欧正在发生的类似改革进程的工作很少。研究腐败及其替代办法这一历史问题的学者需要讨论整个区域的共同经验领域，以及当代研究其他国家的政策和经验的证据，这是早该有的。

RationaleWestern Europe is widely regarded as a region where cultural and political changes in the modern era have led to an unusually high proportion of countries who are regularly rated highly for their standards in public life and governance and low tolerance of corrupt behaviour by administrators and officials. The 2018 Corruption Perception Index, produced by Transparency International, featured 12 western European countries in its top 20 'least corrupt countries'. This project intends to explore the regional and international influences on campaigns against corruption within western European civic life between 1820 and 1900. My initial research has revealed considerable communication between policy makers, administrators and contemporary commentators and journalists in the drive to counter corrupt behaviour by state bureaucrats in early nineteenth century Europe. This project aims to develop an interdisciplinary forum for intellectual exchange between researchers in nineteenth century European history, political scientists, policy-makers, think-tanks and lobby groups. Following a successful international symposium held in Oxford in January 2019, funded by the British Academy 'Rising Star' Engagement Award scheme, the project now seeks to hold similar events across Europe to promote further collaboration between academics and policy-makers to take on research challenges together, as well as to navigating the often divergent methodological traditions between historians and political scientists.Research ContextHistorians working on the campaigns against corruption in Britain have hitherto tended to focus on three issues: the campaign against 'old' (or political corruption) in Britain until 1832; the impact of the Northcote-Trevelyan report of February 1854; corruption and its elimination in local government at the end of the nineteenth century.The concept of a 'public service ethos' in administration has only recently attracted historical attention, as previously, studies of public institutions merely emphasised the growing 'professionalism' of the public services in Britain in the nineteenth century, as if the behaviours required by public servants were value-free and uncontested. The process whereby atavistic and self-serving behaviours among individual public officers were replaced with what Frank Carr terms 'an intangible set of values' and John Girling calls 'the pursuit of virtue' remains significantly neglected in British, if not in European, historiography, however. The political press and popular literature played a substantial role in the promotion of agreed standards of public behaviour at this time, however, and the growing culture of public service and its promotion can be analysed through a study of press and print culture, focusing on responses to corruption scandals in the early nineteenth century, while a study of mid-nineteenth century literature can provide evidence of how these cultural values became embedded into public and civic mentalities.Two significant edited collections: S. Tiihonen (ed.) 'The History of corruption in central government' (Oxford, 2003) and R. Kroeze et al (eds.) 'Anticorruption in History: From Antiquity to the Modern Age' (Oxford, 2017) indicate that much work has already been done on the cultural reform of administrations at the national level, outside Britain, especially in Scandinavian countries, but that there has been little work on how intellectual, political and cultural exchange helps to account for a similar process of reform occurring across western Europe in this period. The need for scholars working on the historical problem of corruption and its alternatives to discuss the areas of common experience across the region and the evidence for contemporary study of other countries' policies and experiences is now overdue.