A framework for analysis

In the introduction I briefly stated how the research of this book is first and foremost about changing public values between 1748 and 1813 in the Netherlands. Second, I stated how it is about political corruption which serves a double purpose. It is used as a tool to study changing public values but is also a topic (or rather: a negative public value) in its own right. This resulted in the central research question: which changes in public values and public value systems become apparent from scandals of political corruption in the Netherlands between 1748 and 1813? In the following I discuss the analytical and methodological framework that is used to answer this question.

Hidden morals, explicit scandals

Public values and political corruption are intangible by their very nature. Personal moral choices and deliberations often remain sealed off from public view, and political corruption – for obvious reasons – usually remains hidden. In all times and places ideas on what is right and wrong tend to be implicitly understood rather than explicitly stated. It is therefore difficult to find out what is right or wrong in specific historical contexts. In study I argue that the problem is solved when we look for explicit views that inevitably occur when things go wrong. After all, what is wrong does often become the explicit subject of debate and discussion. When behaviour of public officials becomes regarded as unacceptable, public values and perceptions of political corruption that until then had remained largely hidden are discussed out in the open. For this reason, this study focuses on scandals that caused a significant amount of debate, i.e., political corruption that is discussed by a number of sources of public values (see below).

Of course, a focus on scandal and debate has its downsides. For one, the political corruption in scandals is potentially different from what we might call ‘normal’ political corruption or ‘regular’ crime. This concerns political corruption that was not accompanied by scandal and/or debate because there was no normative ambiguity. It was often solved outside of public court and/or pamphlet wars and never went beyond a small circle of people on the shop floor. It was political corruption in which the only question was whether someone was guilty or not. Since it is of course possible that only a fraction of the political corruption in the province of Holland between 1748 and 1813 turned into a scandal we might therefore miss crucial information as attention is almost inevitably focused on high-profile actors and far reaching affairs instead of low key officials and their ‘petty’, normal or fully ‘institutionalized’ and therefore ‘invisible’ political corruption. An exclusive focus on extraordinary or abnormal instances in scandal and debate might then offer a somewhat distorted view. Related to this is a second possible objection that an explicit focus on scandals inevitably leads to some sort of bias because many scandals occur for political reasons. This potentially causes allegations of political corruption to be either exaggerated or simply made up as they are used as instruments in political debate. This can make it difficult to separate truth from fiction.

Such objections are important. They signal that much political corruption will not and cannot (at least in this study) be taken into account and that allegations can also be fabricated for political ends. At the same time I argue that the benefits of a focus on scandals outweigh such objections and that the objections can, in part, be refuted. First and foremost, as mentioned, a focus on scandals has the benefit of bringing often hidden and implicit public values out into the open. It is precisely because the unacceptable rather than the acceptable is often subject to explicit public debate that the focus of this study has to be on scandals. Public values and explicit perceptions of right and wrong behaviour become apparent in moments of crisis and condemnation. Scandals and the explicit debates and discussions they fuel serve to articulate and show the unacceptable, the unwanted and the intolerable. This, in turn, provides a view of what was accepted, or as Brooks wrote: “the existence of political corruption implies the existence of positive political values” (1970: 61).

Secondly, large scandals – while often focused on high profile actors or events – can and often do reveal ‘normal’ political corruption by different actors on different levels. Examples of this can be found in the large scandals discussed in chapters six and seven, which provide much insight into systematic and highly institutionalized ‘normal’ political corruption. Third, although political motives are indeed often at play this does not have to be the case and, more importantly from a methodological point of view, does not make the public values that are expressed any less noteworthy. Why something is said is not as important as the fact that it is being said at all. In a case investigated by Hoenderboom and Kerkhoff (2008), for example, two rival factions in the Dutch town council of Gorinchem, seem to have accused each other of being guilty of the same wrong behaviour. Both sides argued from or adhered to the same set of values and accused each other of committing the same type of offences. We will see examples of this in the case studies presented here as well (for instance clearly in chapter eight) where accusations of political corruption are obviously hypocritical, ambiguous and politically motivated but this is outweighed by the fact that certain ‘new’ values were in fact mentioned. If we want to look at which public values are mentioned and what perceptions of political corruption can be found then all statements to that effect are valuable, whether or not they were true. Admittedly the question why something is being said does become of crucial

importance when assessing the when, how and/or why of changing public values. For this reason the case studies will not ignore the possible impact of political motives.

A focus on scandals has more advantages when investigating the contextual meaning of public values and perceptions of political corruption and fits well with approaches discussed earlier. In chapter one I put forward Johnston’s definition of political corruption as “the abuse, according to the legal or social standards constituting a society’s system of public order, of a public role or resource for private benefit” (1996: 333). I discussed how this broad and flexible definition was able to catch the contextual and contingent nature of public values. In doing so the definition not only does more justice to the concept of political corruption but also makes it suitable for historical research into changing public values. Crucially, Johnston’s definition urges us to look at the interaction between individual abuse of office and legal and social standards of a society’s system of public order. It invites us to investigate how the content of notions such as ‘abuse’, ‘public role’ and ‘private benefit’ are contested and thereby acquire meaning in specific times and places.

It is, according to Johnston, precisely in the clash over boundaries that concepts like political corruption acquire their meaning. Johnston wants us to put conflicts over standards at centre stage as “contention over the basic outlines of corruption may be the most important facts to understand, and indeed conflicting conceptions of corruption may be both key weapons in those conflicts and useful diagnostic tools for making sense of political and social change” (2005: 72). He therefore adds: “disputes over the meaning of (such) basic ideas are substantial issues worth careful study in their own right” (Ibid.). Disagreement and contesta- tion over key issues such as the behaviour of public officials demonstrates a lack of consensus but also offers opportunities for change. Scandal, debate and contestation are the result of ‘interaction gone wrong’ which makes the implicit visible and explicit. Scandals involving public official misconduct become instruments to trace changing public values to try and get a grip on contextual perceptions of political corruption over time. They help to explain why and when certain things are not acceptable anymore. Why and when, for instance, did it become unacceptable for tax officials to have some people pay more taxes than they legally should (see chapter six), for magistrates to only serve their patron and/or oligarchy (see chapter seven) or for public officials to only serve their personal interests (see chapter eight)?

Since public values are only defined as such in some kind of historical context, scandals are a good way of investigating this context (see also Moodie, 1989: 873). Lawrence Sherman’s definition of scandal is used in this study. To Sherman a scandal is “a social reaction to the violation of socially invested trust in an institutional role” (1989: 888-889). Sherman explains how a scandalous act is usually not a part of the assumptions to which people are accustomed. In addition, it is often a matter of betrayal of trust that explains the public outrage often witnessed in scandals. When a public official betrays trust it means that a particular part of society deviates from what is considered appropriate and what are ‘agreed upon’ standards of conduct. This triggers debate that at specific junctures in time (in moments of ‘crisis’) becomes explicit about which values are regarded as relevant to the behaviour of public officials. In public debates explicit statements are provided on what is the ‘public good’ or ‘proper’ behaviour. Since public values are essentially contested (see chapter one) the idea of ‘clashes over boundaries’ is central to the question what, if anything, occurs when different views on correct or incorrect behaviour collide or come together and how this affects the changing meaning of public values and perceptions of political corruption over time.