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

西欧被广泛认为是一个现代文化和政治变革导致其公共生活和治理标准经常得到高度评价的国家比例异常高的区域，对行政人员和官员腐败行为的容忍度很低。2018年清廉指数由透明国际（Transparency International）编制，其中12个西欧国家跻身“最廉洁国家”前20名。该项目旨在探讨1820年至1900年期间西欧公民生活中反腐败运动的区域和国际影响。我的初步研究表明，在世纪早期的欧洲，政策制定者、管理者和当代评论员和记者之间在打击国家官僚腐败行为的过程中进行了大量的沟通。该项目旨在建立一个跨学科论坛，供十九世纪欧洲历史研究人员、政治科学家、决策者、智囊团和游说团体进行知识交流。继2019年1月在牛津成功举办国际研讨会后，该项目由英国学院“冉冉升起的星星”参与奖计划资助，现在该项目寻求在欧洲各地举办类似活动，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，以及在历史学家和政治科学家之间往往存在分歧的方法论传统中导航。研究背景迄今为止，英国的反腐败运动倾向于集中在三个问题上：反“老”运动（或政治腐败）在英国直到1832年; 1854年2月的诺斯科特-特里维廉报告的影响;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”概念直到最近才引起历史的关注，和以前一样，对公共机构的研究仅仅强调了世纪英国公共服务部门日益增长的“专业性”，好像公务员所要求的行为是无价值的，没有争议的。然而，在英国（如果不是欧洲的话）的历史编纂中，个别公职人员的返祖和自私行为被弗兰克卡尔所说的“一套无形的价值观”和约翰·格林所说的“对美德的追求”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促进当时商定的公共行为标准方面发挥了重要作用，可以通过研究报刊和印刷文化来分析日益增长的公共服务文化及其促进，重点是对十九世纪初腐败丑闻的反应，而对世纪中期文学的研究可以提供这些文化价值如何嵌入公众和公民心态的证据。Tiihonen（ed.）《中央政府腐败史》（牛津，2003年）和R。Kroeze等人（编辑）'历史上的反腐败：《从古代到现代》（牛津，2017年）指出，在英国以外的国家层面，特别是在斯堪的纳维亚国家，已经做了很多关于政府文化改革的工作，但是关于知识，政治和文化交流如何帮助解释这一时期西欧发生的类似改革过程的工作很少。研究腐败这一历史问题及其替代办法的学者现在早就应该讨论整个区域的共同经验领域以及当代研究其他国家政策和经验的证据。

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.