Visible and Invisible Cultures of Parliamentary Ethics

The 'Sports Rorts' Affair Revisited

Bibliographic Data

ID6234574
AuthorsRodney Smith (0000-0002-8122-6663, corresponding author)
Year1999
Volume34
Issue1
Pages47-62
Publication date1999-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAustralian Journal of Political Science (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1036-1146 • E-ISSN: 1363-030X
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/10361149950452
OpenAlexW2087995674
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited13

A growing body of research has examined the ethical cultures of liberal democratic legislatures via interview studies of parliamentarians. Mancuso's recent study of British parliamentarians distinguishes between four ethical types-Puritans, Entrepreneurs, Servants and Muddlers. Such studies, while valuable, appear to have two shortcomings when applied to Australia. First, they underestimate the centrality of political parties in most parliamentarians' ethical perspectives. A fifth ethical type, the Party Servant, is needed to remedy this deficiency. Second, the studies risk overestimating the diversity of ethical views effectively operating in parliaments because of their methodological focus on individual interview responses. Parliamentarians' individual responses form invisible cultures of legislative ethics. The visible cultures found in the everyday discourse of legislatures contain considerably less ethical variety. Here parliamentarians generally appear limited to Puritan and Party Servant perspectives. These arguments are explored through a systematic investigation of parliamentary discourse on the 'sports rorts' affair

Democracy · Diversity (politics · Legislature · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Judicial and Constitutional Studies · Law · Law in Society and Culture · Political Philosophy and Ethics

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