Corruption in ethics represents actions and behaviours that fail to comply with normative or ideal standards; and the effect of corruption on trust is most often negative. From the premises of preceding arguments, the questions this research will attempt to answer are:
1. In the framework of ethical governance, what are the natures of anti-corruption crusade in Nigeria, Ghana, and Cameroon?
2. What are the differences of the countries in relation to public trust in-crease and corruption reduction?
3. What are the core ways of increasing trust and combating corruption in each country?
Countries globally adopt different ways to reduce corruption. Some countries can have zero tolerance policies for corruption and other unethical practices, while others can have moderate tolerance policies for corruption and other unethical practices. The policies and procedures for anti-corruption crusade can play a ma-jor role in this regard. Discussing anti-corruption crusade in any country is never without anti-corruption agencies, specifically set up with the responsibility of reducing corruption. When these agencies are able to accomplish the task of re-ducing corruption, public trust is then positively affected, because they have been able to accomplish citizens’ expectations. In the general direction of reducing corruption and other unethical practices is where ethical governance plays a lead-ing role, because of the attachment of its values and mechanisms to trust. This is further to say that ethical values and mechanisms can reduce corruption and in-crease public trust.
The methodological approach to be adopted in this research will be a qualitative analysis with a comparative premise. The empirical objects to be analysed or de-scribed are structured interviews conducted using open ended and closed ended formats at different instances. In addition, to serve as basis of analysis are the reports and other relevant documents of anti-corruption agencies of three coun-tries being studied in this research.
The qualitative method is a crucial part of social science research, especially pub-lic management. Research is about finding something new; and collecting and interpreting data are part of it, because they help in giving meaning to a research project and concretizing its result. In public management, literature review, inter-view, and documents analysis are some special strategies adopted by researchers
in qualitative analysis. Methodology in research helps in answering questions and justifying other relevant positions taken in a research project.
Comparison on its part is about finding differences and similarities among varia-bles or objects. Comparison in public management is different from most other tradition, because it often deals with the questions of ‘what,’ ‘why,’ ‘when,’
‘how,’ and ‘where’ of phenomena. To compare generally, represents a willing-ness or desire to understand more concretely. The descriptive qualitative analysis with a comparative premise adopted in this research tries to answer the ‘what’ and
‘how’ questions of the phenomena of ‘corruption’ and ‘trust’ through interviews and documentary analysis in Nigeria, Ghana, and Cameroon.
Interview plays different roles in this research. Most importantly, it helps in in-vestigating public trust. Interviews take the shape of conversation between two or more individuals; but normally between a researcher and different respondents in a research work of this nature. The relationship that an interviewer or a researcher enters with interviewee(s) is very important, because questions are asked and an-swers are given. Documents are analysed in most research project as a strategy to understanding special issues that relate to a research task. The questions of validi-ty and reliabilivalidi-ty are always there in documents analysis and interview; how valid and reliable are the documents being used in our research analysis? Interviews and documents analysis do play complementary role on each other in a research work. Interviews can help a researcher to understand in more detailed terms the contents and direction of a particular document in various dimensions. However, the general research strategy is described more in chapter 3 of this thesis.
An Overview of Wanted Impact and Anticipated Contribution
Table 1 gives a general picture of wanted impact and anticipated contribution of this research work. At the various levels of society, ethical governance, trust, and policies and procedures; desired impact and anticipated contribution of this work differ. Differentiation or similarity relating to these contexts can relate to the is-sues of choice, discipline, purpose, orientation/belief etc.
Table 1. Research Overview
Levels
Wanted/Desired Impact Anticipated Contribution of this Work
Society
Governance
Lower corruption Achieving a viable anti-corruption crusade for holistic development
Ethical Governance
Understanding right thoughts and necessary elements
Instituting right behaviour and de-sired performance in anti-corruption related crusade
Trust Creating a system/situation where trust exists and are understood as vital part of legitimate governance
Instituting trust increase for anti-corruption related crusade
Policies and Proce-dures of Agencies
Understanding ethical governance compliant policies and procedures and achieving sound policies and procedures
For the designers, observers, im-plementers, and students of anti-corruption crusade to have the right understanding concerning success achievement in anti-graft war
The desire to have low level of corruption in order to achieve development is the dream of any good society. Governance is a broad action process; understanding the right thoughts and elements helps in instituting right behaviour and desired performance in anti-corruption related crusade. Creating a system/situation where trust exists can take different dimensions; due to the nature of societal problems like corruption, instituting trust increase for anti-corruption crusade is paramount.
Policies and procedures for anti-corruption crusade are more viable when they are ethical governance compliant; and due to this fact, designers, observers, imple-menters, and students of anti-corruption crusade must recognize and accept ethi-cal governance importance.
The Plan of the Study
The first chapter deals with the general introduction of this research, which also includes the background; overview of previous research on ethical governance;
and ethics and public administration research with sub-headings on the Weberian and Riggsian traditions, and administrative ethics as a doctrine. The second chap-ter will deal more on the meaning of ethical governance; ethics; ethical values and mechanisms; ethical governance and rationality; public trust; trust in public
ad-ministration and management; public trust and combating corruption (ideological and institutional views). The third chapter will focus on the research strategy choice of method; and the presentation of country cases.
The fourth chapter, which is the first part of the empirical analysis, will focus on how anti-corruption activities are organized and shall include main provisions for corruption and unethical practices from models perspective; country-based analy-sis of anti-corruption agencies (ICPC Nigeria, CHRAJ Ghana, and NACC Came-roon); policies and procedures of anti-corruption agencies; and critical examina-tion of anti-corrupexamina-tion policies and procedures in three countries. The fifth chap-ter, which is the second part of the empirical analysis, will focus on the considera-tion of ethical governance, public trust, corrupconsidera-tion, and the operaconsidera-tion of anti-corruption agencies through expert interviews. The sixth chapter, which is the
conclusion, shall focus on the main findings, and recommendations.