Helena Olofsdotter Stensöta

Public Ethics of Care—A General Public Ethics

The discussion on how the ethics of care can be made political has increasingly expanded its scope from welfare politics and administration, to global processes such as migration. Notwithstanding this expansion, most studies on the ethics of care in this field remain in policy areas that we already consider being care-oriented, leaving non-care areas beyond the scope of investigation. In addition, there is seldom any concern of how ethics of care concerns in policy may be implemented. I argue that the concept of public ethics may serve as a vehicle for promoting care ethical concerns in practice. I develop the concept of public ethics of care (PEC), intended as a general public ethics, thereby expanding the scope of the ethics of care towards policy areas hitherto not considered care-oriented, such as law enforcement policy, prison management, as well as housing, infrastructure and environmental policies. I outline the argument theoretically and demonstrate how PEC may reshape concerns in practice.

Final Thoughts: Taking Stock and Reflections on Ways Forward

This final chapter deepens how the two main contributions of the volume, the importance of gender equality and the usefulness of institutional theory, may forward our understanding of the link between gender and corruption, and exemplifies these points with the help of the preceding chapters. Beyond these conclusions, it further reflects on notions of individual-level mechanisms and calls for increased carefulness in transferring ideas of mechanisms from one context or problem to another; possible pitfalls of this are highlighted. It is further proposed to distinguish broadly between “refraining from” and “actively protecting” as two equally valid mechanisms that may enhance good government. A final reflection on how gender and power is connected in the field ends the chapter.

Why Expect a Link Between Gender and Corruption

This chapter departs from the initial studies, published in the 1990s, demonstrating that a higher proportion of women in positions of power correlates with lower levels of corruption. It reflects on contemporary research suggesting a more complex picture. For example, the correlation is much stronger in democracies than in non-democratic states and more visible in studies focusing on the electoral arena than the bureaucracy/administration. The chapter presents promising avenues along which research can be developed highlighting the need for gendered accounts of historical processes; in-depth studies of dynamics in the electoral arena versus bureaucracy; concretization of the role women may play in processes towards good government, theoretical renewal regarding concepts of corruption and the role of masculinity for corrupt transactions.

Is Women’s Political Representation Beneficial to Women’s Interests in Autocracies? Theory and Evidence from Post-Soviet Russia

Previous research has revealed a connection between increased women’s political representation (WPR) and responsiveness to women’s interests in democracies; however, our knowledge about this in non-democracies is practically non-existent. Building on the authoritarian regimes and on gender and informal institutions literatures, we theorize WPR effects in the context of autocratic regimes, explaining why the positive dynamics between WPR and women-friendly policy outcomes and outputs may be disrupted there. Employing an original dataset from 80 subnational political units in a large electoral autocracy (Russia), we find that larger numbers of women in regional legislatures are associated with higher rates of infant mortality, while the level of democracy moderates the relationship. The analysis reveals no association between higher numbers of women in senior bureaucratic posts and child mortality.

Corruption as Exploitation: Feminist Exchange Theories and the Link Between Gender and Corruption

How can feminist theories be used to understand and explain the phenomena of corruption? The chapter explores what it means to expand the definition of corruption into sexual corruption to make sense of its dynamics. We highlight the different ways sexual corruption plays out and further inquire into how feminist theories that problematize asymmetrical opportunities along gender and the public/private divide may contribute to theories on gender and corruption. We conclude that men are the beneficiaries of sexual corruption, and therefore, corruption is an additional risk for women connected to male power. Furthermore, the feminist ambition to dismantle the distinction between private and public spheres means that every misuse of power can be seen as corruption, with far-reaching empirical consequences for the study of corruption.

Corruption and Female Representation in the Bureaucracy

Although in mainstream discussion bureaucratic quality is considered a major factor in curbing corruption, the relationship between corruption and women in the administration has been less well studied. This chapter discusses how institutional theory can be used to make sense of how the relationship between gender and corruption varies between contexts, and suggests that a suppressing logic within bureaucracy limits the impact of gender on corruption, whereas an enforcing logic of the legislature enhances it. This idea comprehends gender as “raw material” to institutions, rather than created by them. However, the discretion used within frontline bureaucracy suggests that gender may matter more on this level. The chapter outlines how the qualities of the raw material are mediated by institutional logics to affect corruption.

Welfare State Regimes and Caseworkers’ Problem Explanation

In frontline bureaucracy research, the dominant view holds that frontline workers resist managerial pressure to “blame the poor” by bending the rules based on moral considerations, a practice labeled “citizen agency.” We suggest that frontline responses to managerial pressure are filtered through welfare state regime type. Based on in-depth study of caseworker reasoning in Sweden and Denmark, we find a “structural problem explanation” that sees reasons for clients seeking support as rooted in the structures of society—not in the individual client. We find and present two narratives hitherto not problematized in frontline bureaucracy research: the “statesperson” and the “professional.”

Why Women in Encompassing Welfare States Punish Corrupt Political Parties

Citizens punish corrupt political parties; that is the microfoundation for the theory that electoral accountability acts as a mechanism to curb corruption. Empirical research, however, shows that the link is weaker than anticipated in theory. Citizens do not always and everywhere “vote the rascals out,” and it is hard to underpin the notion that perceptions of corruption play an important role when voters decide which party to vote for (see Xezonakis et al., Chapter 16 in this volume). This does not mean that electoral accountability can be neglected in studies on corruption and good governance—it only means that we need to find new ways to analyze how this mechanism works in different settings.