Managing Conflict of Interest - Organisation for Economic Co ...

Conflict of interest: A historical andcomparative perspectiveSir Tim LankesterPresident, Corpus Christi College, Oxford University, United KingdomIntroductionConflict of interest among political leaders and public officials,as we understand it today, has existed as long as there has beenpublic administration. 1 In most premodern societies, the very conceptof conflict of interest would not have been recognized. Therewere a few societies, such as Sasanian Iran and early Tang China,where public officials were expected to administer purely in theinterests of the state or of the supreme ruler. Whether they did sois another matter. But in most societies, whether it was 17th centuryEngland or 18th century Java, it was automatically assumed thatpolitical leaders and officials would take advantage of public officeto advance their own personal interests.It is really only since the advent of the modern industrializingstate that the notion has taken hold that public officials and theirpolitical masters should be expected to act exclusively in the interestsof the state. States with large military ambitions, such as Englandin the 18th century and Bismarck’s and Hitler’s Germany, needed anefficient and relatively incorrupt civil service if their ambitions wereto be fulfilled. The Soviet Union needed officials who were dedicatedwholly to the social and economic transformation envisagedby Lenin and Stalin. When countries in Western Europe and elsewheredemocratized and their governments became accountableto their publics, the people as “sovereign” began to insist via theballot box that politicians and officials should act in the public, asopposed to their own personal, interest.In most countries, expectations as to the proper duties ofpoliticians and officials have changed over time in the directionof greater transparency and clearer division between their public1This paper deals only with conflict of interest in respect of politicians and nonelectedofficials. It does not address conflict of interest in the private sector.ADB/OECD Anti-Corruption Initiative for Asia and the Pacific