Can Ethical Political Leadership Restore Public Trust in Political Leaders?

Recently there have been a number of high-profile perceived unethical leadership behaviour and practices. These have affected the public's trust in political leaders and government globally (see, Elderman Trust Barometer, 2019b). Trust in political leaders and government is at a low level although trust in government is considered as an indispensable for the effective functioning of democracy. The decline of public trust in political leaders is well documented. The study has also found evidence in support of the decline.

Regardless of the current level and direction of the public’s trust in political leaders, the key questions are as follows: How to restore the public’s trust? Can ethical political leadership restore public trust in political leaders? How? In order to address these very closely interconnected questions, local political leaders across the UK were interviewed. The results of these interviews were analysed and presented in the context of the regulatory framework, and being a moral person and a moral leader. The key finding of this study is that the remedies for the distrust lie largely in the hands of political leaders themselves. Trust can be gradually restored to a reasonable level when words and actions accord with one another—telling the truth, keeping promises and engaging with the community.

Over the decade, a growing body of research (e.g., Beshi & Kaur, 2020; Mozumder, 2018; Rose & Wessels, 2019) has recognised the significant contributions of ethical leadership practices in enhancing public trust in government. Despite the rapid growth of ethical leadership research there remain gaps in the relevant literature. First, the context of most previous studies has been managerial ethical leadership in public organisations. Political leaders were excluded. To fill this gap, the context of the study is ethical political leadership in local government. Political leaders work in a different context (Morrell & Hartley, 2006a, b). Local politicians have direct contact with the public who elect them. People elect political leaders based on their manifestos, and trust them to fulfil their promises and act in a way that serves the public interest. Party politics, political interests and rivalry create special challenges (and new research opportunities) for the practice of ethical political leadership in local government. Second, leadership context is a major factor that affects leadership processes and outcomes (Osborn et al., 2002). There is a lack of empirical research on ethical political leadership in UK local government (See, Ng & Feldman, 2015). This study aims to fill this void by attempting to contextualise ethical political leadership in UK local government. The current socio-political factors for the UK politics, such as Brexit which has created a division in the society as well as in politics across the UK, provide us with a context for an interesting case study. Moreover, the conflictual political environment, hierarchical (multi-level) leadership and electoral authority in the local government may implicate leaders in political interest seeking. Third, a number of studies (e.g., Hassan, 2015; Mozumder, 2018) have found evidence in support of a positive relationship between value-based leadership and leadership outcomes in public organisations. Nonetheless, how ethical political leaders influence positive outcomes (e.g., public trust) is still understudied. This study aims to fill this void by gaining a better understanding of the psychological process by which ethical political leaders influence public trust.

Considering the hierarchical structure of party politics, this study is based on the premise that political leadership is a multilevel phenomenon. All levels of ethical political leadership matter. In a democracy, each local councillor is a leader of the community as its elected representative. Councillors are likely to act as ethical role models because of their proximity to the community. The party group leaders and whips set the tone at the top and influence their followers to act ethically (or unethically). Drawing on social learning theory (Bandura, 1977, 1986) and social exchange theory (Blau, 1964), the study maintains that the party political leadership process cascades or trickles down from party leaders to local leaders and then to the community.

Social learning theory (SLT) and social exchange theory (SET) are cognitive and behavioral approaches that have provided theoretical framework for building and maintaining trusting relationships between social actors. SLT can be broadly understood as a social behavioural approach that underlines the reciprocal interaction between cognitive, behavioral and environmental determinants of human behaviour and actions (Bandura, 1977). SET posits that the interaction of people with others based on an assessment of the costs and benefits (intrinsic and extrinsic) of such interactions (Blau, 1964). Reciprocity is a crucial factor to participation behavior. Ethical leaders may influence followers through social exchange processes based on the norm of reciprocity; followers feel obligated to reciprocate helpful and fair treatments (Mozumder, 2018). Both SLT and SET have focused on the social structures created by repeated social interactions (and exchanges) and the ways in which these social structures both restrain and permit social actors to gain, exercise and maintain power and influence. Within the social influence and social exchange processes commitment, fairness and collective action can influence trusting relationships. Previous research proved and explained this relationship. For example, from a practical perspective, the findings of Mozumder (2018) supports the notion of trust as the axis on which socio-emotional relationships revolve. Therefore, following the SLT and SET logic, leaders are expected to influence followers’ behaviour by demonstrating ethically appropriate behaviour and through socio-emotional exchange process based on trust.

The rest of the article is structured as follows. The next section elaborates on the theoretical background by conceptualising key components of ethical political leadership and trust, and setting up the context of the study. The research methodology is discussed in the following section. The next section analyses and presents the findings, and how they address the original research questions. In the following section implications of the findings are discussed. Finally, concluding remarks are offered.

Dinh et al. (2014) and Van Wart (2013a, b) highlighted the diversity of leadership literature. Leadership has been defined from different perspectives based on the purpose of the study, context and the underlying motivational process. For example, Brown et al. (2005, p. 120) defined ethical leadership as ‘‘the demonstration of normatively appropriate conduct through personal actions and interpersonal relationships, and the promotion of such conduct to followers through two-way communication, reinforcement, and decision making.’’ Brown and his colleagues left the term ‘normatively appropriate’ vague because they considered that appropriate conduct is to some extent context dependent. This assumption is likely to be correct, yet without core moral reference points we can find reasons for justifying almost any of our intentions, actions or outcomes. March and Olsen (2004) emphasizes on the rules (logic) of appropriateness in the context of formally organized political institutions and democratic political orders. The minimisation of ethics to autonomy in a socio-political context could tear the heart out of ethics. There are various, more or less widely shared core moral values and virtues, combined with deontological and consequentialist elements, such as truthfulness, trustworthiness, keeping promises, which may be of normative significance. Core moral senses of terms such as truthfulness, which seem to be easily understood by most people in different societies and cultures, may serve as norms, helping us to assess and eventually guide our intentions and actions.

Honesty, integrity, fairness, trustworthiness and concern for others are the core elements of many emerging leadership theories such as authentic (Luthans & Avolio, 2003), Spiritual (Fry, 2003), and ethical (Brown et al., 2005) leadership. Brown and his colleagues refer these characteristics as a moral person aspect of ethical leadership. The other aspect they refer to is that of moral manager, who sets the tone at the top, acts as a role model and influences follower’s behaviour through socio-emotional exchange process. There are significant overlaps between the terms manager and leader in organisational settings. However, in political context the term leader seems more appropriate because elected councillors are not responsible for day to day management of the council business. Being a moral person first, a moral leader influences the moral conducts of their followers.

This study takes a triple-pillar approach to ethical leadership, examining ethical leadership practices in the context of code of conduct (regulatory framework), being a moral person and being a moral leader. Although some occasionally makes a distinction, the terms ethics and morality are used interchangeably because morality can refer to personal, social and religious values, code of conduct or social mores (or norms) from a society, or a standard (goodness and rightness) that is believed, accepted and applied by an individual. Public leadership studies (e.g., Downe et al., 2013; Mozumder, 2018) have begun to find a connection between value-based leadership practices and codes of conduct and their effect on followers’ behaviors and cognitions. Regulatory (codified) framework establishes how a government and its society function and enforces the behaviors and actions individuals are expected to follow, while ethics suggest what individuals ought to follow. Ethical leadership comes from within individual’s moral sense.

Although the phenomenon of ethical leadership has been studied more than fifteen years, both theoretically and empirically (e.g., Brown et al., 2005; Hassan et al., 2014; Mozumder, 2018), there remain gaps in our knowledge of how the ethical leadership process actually operates in a political context (Leach & Wilson, 2002). Morrell and Hartley (2006a, p. 484) define political leaders as: “i) democratically elected ii) representatives who iii) are vulnerable to deselection, and iv) operate within, as well as influence a constitutional and legal framework.” This definition illustrates how elected political leaders differ from other leaders such as informal political leaders, despots, as well as from private-, public- and voluntary-sector leaders, who do not have a similar mandate. This distinction has not been adequately addressed in the literature. The key question is whether ethics has an essential role to play in political leadership.

From Socrates, Plato and Aristotle to Machiavelli, Hobbes and Kant, political philosophers and scientists have elaborated their thoughts about the relationship between ethics and politics. Both dirty hands (see, Walzer, 1973) and moral dilemma challenge the idea that moral values are absolute. The question is whether we require extremely moralized politics, tending to utopianism, or extremely politicised morality, tending to drop authentic morality altogether. We need to find a balance by determining the core components of an ethical standard; understanding this could help us minimise the tensions between morality and politics.

In a democracy, ethical political leadership can be conceptualised as a socio-political process where the leaders are duly elected, guided by principles, motivated by public values and trust, and act within the socio-legal framework to impact the lives of citizens. Public values (or public interests) and trust are two key components of ethical political leadership. Trust is defined as the ‘‘psychological state comprising the intention to accept vulnerability based upon positive expectations of the intentions or behaviour of another’’ (Rousseau et al., 1998, p. 395). Trust in political leaders refers to the level of confidence citizens have in their elected representatives to act appropriately and honestly in the public interest rather than from self-interest (see, Citrin & Stoker, 2018). Trust in political leaders is vital for the effective functioning of a democratic government (see, Beerbohm, 2015). Democracy is an important example of the principal–agent relationship, where the public (principal) entrust a relatively small number of representatives (agents) with powers to govern them. Yet the public should not abandon scepticism or have blind faith in political agents. In no political system is it prudent to trust completely. Appropriate mechanisms for checks and balances are essential for effective functioning of democracy.

In response to public concerns to improve the ethical standards of political leaders, the Committee on Standards in Public Life, which was established in 1994, is responsible for promoting the seven principles of public life: selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty, and leadership – commonly known as the Nolan Principles. Under section 27 of the Localism Act 2011, each local authority must adopt a code of conduct against which councillors’ conduct may be assessed.

The code of conduct is not an alternative to moral values, although a lack of regulatory framework may increase the risk of things going from bad to worse. In its 20th report on local government ethical standards, the Committee on Standards in Public Life (2019) concluded that the current framework is conducive to promoting and maintaining the standards expected by the public. Yet, public trust in political leaders is declining (Elderman Trust Barometer, 2019a). Therefore, given the changing historical, economic, social, political and legal context of democratic government, this is a particularly appropriate time to study ethical political leadership in the UK local government.

In response to the call for more detailed qualitative research on ethical leadership (Hassan, 2015) a qualitative approach (Flick, 2002) is employed in this study. The study of ethical leadership in political context is particularly well suited for qualitative analyses because of the multidisciplinary nature of the field. Moreover, the study of leadership is context dependent. The qualitative approach helps illuminate the phenomenon through the perceptions of the political leaders, generating insights into their motives and actions.

Data were collected in 2019 mainly via in-depth interviews with multiple informants, including elected council leaders, leaders of party groups, mayors, whips, cabinet members, chairs of committees (e.g., standard committee, overview and scrutiny committee) and councillors without portfolios. An interview protocol was prepared to match the research objectives and research questions in this study. The interview questions were semi-structured to allow other questions to emerge during the interviewing process so that additional ideas could be explored. Examples of the open ended questions are: What was your motivation for joining politics? What does ethical leadership mean to you in the context of politics? Do you think public trust in politicians and political institutions has been declining? Why? Do you think ethics matters in politics? Why and how? In total, 121 interviews were conducted, enough to confirm the adequacy and quality of data to support the study’s conclusions, and show that further data collection and/or analysis were unnecessary. Most of the interviews were recorded (and transcribed) and field (or interview) notes were taken with permission from the interviewees. The anonymity of councillors and councils was promised in order to encourage their participation, and this anonymity is preserved here.

The councils and councillors were selected primarily using a purposive sampling technique (Pettigrew, 1990) in order to incorporate a diverse context for leadership likely to bear on patterns of behaviour and actions – thus mitigating the problem of sampling bias. It also helped to build a logical chain of evidence, increasing internal and external construct validity (Eisenhardt, 1989). The councils were selected with due consideration to factors such as type, size (population), leadership, political make up and location of the council. For example, different types of councils such as Unitary authorities, County councils, District councils, London boroughs and Metropolitan district councils from across the UK were selected to represent different types of political control and make-up such as controlled by Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, SNP, independent councillors and coalition government. In selecting councillors, a number of political and demographic factors such as party affiliation, level of leadership position and gender were considered. To achieve balance, extra effort was made to increase participation of Conservative (party) and female councillors. In total, 121 councillors (4 of them submitted their written responses to the interview questions) from 65 local authorities participated in the study. Although the sample size is not statically representative, it covers a diverse range of councillors (approx. 0.5% of councillors of principal councils) and councils (approx. 16% of principal councils) in the UK. The profile of the councillors is presented in Table 1.

Data collection followed a three-stage sequential approach with some overlaps between them. In the first phase, several interviews with selected councillors across the UK were conducted in order to gain insights and refine the data collection procedure. In the second phase, the focus was on 11 purposely selected councils to gain more insights and find answers to the research questions. In the third phase, numerous interviews with purposely selected councillors from across the UK were carried out in order to triangulate the data collected. Triangulation strengthened the persuasiveness of the data by enhancing the perceived validity of our findings, and was useful for confirming the accuracy of the data and corroborating our conclusions.

Data analysis consisted of a three-stage process. In the first stage, a thematic framework was developed through an iterative process of dialogue between the data and the literature (Eisenhardt & Graebner, 2007). In the second stage, data were coded and categorized using interpretative strategies, combined with open coding and axial coding (Corbin & Strauss, 2007). This was followed by comparing and hence drawing similarities and differences, leading to categorization of recurrent patterns (Leitch et al., 2010).

The study has found evidence in support of a decline in public trust in political leaders and government. The level of trust varies over time across people (demographic groups). However, across the UK, a large majority of the participant local councillors (who are close to local people) perceive that the trend is downward. Interestingly, there are no significant variations among the respondents related to their demographic profile, which may be partly due to a relatively small sample size. A deputy leader of a party group says: “…collective politicians where people have little respect for, but individual politicians, when they meet them – in my experience people genuinely like them and respect them.” However, a leader of a party group has a different experience: “…when you speak to people on the door steps … the perception that you are all the same. It does not matter whether you are … whatever, you are all the same.”

As to the question of why the level of public trust in political leaders is going down, Brexit is at the heart of the recent falling. However, when asked, a vast majority of the local politicians in the study thought that unethical political leadership behaviour were part-causes of the low level of public trust. A leader of a party group eloquently summarises:

We had a number of scandals over the years things like MPs’ expenses scandals where people claimed money they should not have done, all those kind of things. And, they do tend to create a perception that politicians are there for themselves not for the wider good. People of the country promised a referendum and they were told their views would be binding. And, since then we had a decisive vote to leave European Union and it has not been enacted. So, then when you get into a situation where politicians promised to deliver something and they don’t and completely break their promise all together. I think it can create a really bad situation where there is a real disconnection between public and people who are here to serve them.

Nevertheless, politicians are just humans. Naturally they sometimes (hopefully not very often) err. When asked, a vast majority of respondents said they joined politics with the best of intention (public service). Sometimes people end up acting wrongly if the system is not geared to preventing it. Politics is a social phenomenon, no different from other walks of life. Unscrupulous behaviour cannot be completely eliminated either from politics or from other parts of the society. However, political leaders, with the mandate to govern the community, have both moral and legal obligation not only to improve their own conducts but also to create (and implement) a system that is conducive for others to conduct themselves well. The answer to the question of how, which is the focus of the study, is discussed in the following subsections: The Regulatory Framework, Being a Moral Person, and Being a Moral Leader.

Public trust in political leaders is crucial for effective functioning of a democratic government because otherwise public is likely to be disengaged and disenchanted with the democratic system. The study uses qualitative analysis to explain processes by which different elements (code of conduct, moral person and moral leader) of ethical leadership have an effect on public trust. Codes of ethics appears to be insufficient to achieve changes without other social processes. The study establishes how moral person dimension has an influence on moral leader dimension of ethical leadership. The study finds that ethical leadership is not just about complying with the codes (and rules), personal moral framework is also important to act as a role model, by setting an example and a tone at the top. The findings of the study demonstrate the explanatory power of moral leadership, explaining how ethical leaders may combine personal moral framework and formal regulatory processes with social learning processes.

The concept of ethical political leadership extends work by Morrell and Hartley (2006a, b) by integrating ethics into political leadership. Theoretically, this article supports social exchange (Bandura, 1977, 1986) and social learning (Blau, 1964) theory, which explains how ethical political leadership practices can positively affect public trust in political leaders. The study also highlights that our ethical framework (set of moral values) should guide our behaviour. Of course, the proponents of virtue ethics, deontologist and consequentialist (including utilitarian) ethics will have their own views of what is right and what is wrong. Yet, there must be some core ethical values to be applied consciously and wisely.

The key findings of the study are that ethical leadership matters in politics and ethical leadership practices such as being truthful, keeping promises, caring for others and engaging with public can help restore some of the lost trust. Political leaders can influence the behaviour of their colleagues and citizens through role modelling (setting good examples), particularly by encouraging those who are new to politics to emulate good behaviour. Public evaluation of the characteristics of political leaders such as honesty, truthfulness, keeping promises, fairness and concern for others is likely to affect public trust.

This study recommends a number of measures that political leaders (at local, national and international level) may adopt to promote ethical leadership in politics. Senior political leaders should set the tone at the top and challenge and punish those who are not behaving ethically. Ethical training helps to maintain awareness, particularly for those who are new to politics. For some councillors, self-training (or self-learning) may help, for others training (or mentoring) programme may be more helpful. However, training should not be just a compliance exercise, rather it should help the participants to realise the value of serving others, and ignite their moral values and inner purposes. Ethical political leadership may also develop and implement a system of tighter ethical screening in the process of selecting candidates, and it would be helpful if their induction to the code were to take place during this process. Political leadership may also develop and implement a system that will encourage, reward and support ethical leadership practices.

The primary objective of the study is to understand how ethical leadership practices can help to restore public trust in political leaders and government. In doing so, a qualitative approach was used and local political leaders across the UK were interviewed. The findings of the study confirm that public trust in political leaders and government is declining. This is partly caused by unethical leadership behaviour. The solution lies mainly in the hands of the politicians themselves. The study has found that while having a code of conduct is useful, it is the politician’s personal moral framework that has a more profound influence on how they generally act. Being a moral person, an ethical political leader sets good examples of behaviour, sets the tone at the top and challenges those who do not behave ethically, as well as encourages, supports and rewards those who perform and conduct themselves well. The level of public trust in political leaders is likely to increase gradually when politicians continue to tell the truth, keep their pledges (or explain to the public why they have been unable to do so), engage with the citizens and serve them to the best of their abilities over a long period of time.

While this study provides evidence that ethical leadership practices may help to restore public trust in political leaders and government, it is difficult to be certain about the causal linkage between ethical leadership behaviour and trust in leaders. This is because every study is time and context bound (Grbich, 2012). Yet, the study provides us with insights into how ethical political leadership practices may help to gradually restore some of the lost trust. There might be some response, recall and interpretation bias although the issue has been addressed by aggregating data collected from multiple informants with a diverse background across the UK. Future research may conduct a longitudinal study in order to examine the effect of ethical leadership practices on public trust in political leaders over a long period. This study includes a number of selected councils and councillors in the UK, providing profitable research opportunities to determine whether its results hold in other local, national or international contexts.