1. Integrity begins with knowledge of the position
SPs should know what their position entails, because integrity is related to their position, and since positions vary, the required integrity also varies. Integrity as a citizen is therefore no guarantee of integrity as an SP.
What is a monarch, president, or mayor? What is a member of a national or provincial congress, or a municipal council? What is a chairman or committee member of a political party?
It is not necessarily a problem if we are unable to answer these questions. However, it becomes a serious problem when SPs cannot answer such questions about their own positions, as in the case of a recently elected municipal councilor who, when asked by a reporter to explain his job, was lost for words.
Not knowing what your own position involves is an essential, even existential failing. Without knowledge of your job you cannot determine what it means to succeed. After all, what is good depends on the position, what it stands for, and the reason it was created. If people are unable to define good work, they cannot determine whether and to what extent they are successful, or whether it would be better to act differently. In such cases they can only get down to work at random, and success is a question of coincidence and luck.
Likewise people cannot act with integrity if they do not know what the position entails. If members of congress wish to act with integrity, for instance, they must first know the function of congress before they can determine what behaving with integrity means. The fact that we link integrity with public service shows that the position plays a part in determining what integrity means for the individual official in context. If the position were irrelevant, we would only be able to talk about acting with integrity as a citizen and not as an official. However, since integrity is linked with specific positions, SPs must know what their positions entail in order to act with integrity.12
Integrity therefore varies in different positions. Different kinds of integrity apply to mayors and councilors, for example. In principle mayors in the UK are not supposed to apply party political views to matters in their own local areas, whereas a county councilor should.13 However, where mayors can or even must be members of political parties and can or must behave party politically outside their own local areas, in a monarchy a monarch must stand back from party politics and cannot be a member of a political party. County councilors will consequently be criticized for failing to express party political views, whereas monarchs will be criticized if they do express such views.
The fact that the position in part determines what counts as integrity means that SPs’ integrity is not equivalent to that of ordinary citizens.14 Citizens are permitted to do things that SPs are not. Citizens are generally free to have second houses wherever they want, but SPs have been discredited for having vacation homes in areas with which their own local authorities had special relationships, located in parks where their officials owned shares, or in countries with bad human rights records, corruption problems, or tax havens. SPs should therefore realize that they are not just ordinary citizens, and that acting with integrity as a citizen in no way guarantees acting with integrity as an SP.15
In order to function with integrity SPs must therefore gain an in-depth understanding of their position. Why was it created and with what aim? What is the function of the position? What does it have in common with similar, related positions, or their own past jobs, and where do these differ?16
SPs should always take their job descriptions to heart. What do the rules and regulations say about the function of their position, what was stated in the vacancy advertisement, and what does the job profile say about this? For anyone who takes integrity seriously, an in-depth investigation into what has already been said and written about the position is indispensible. Without a grasp of history it is impossible to properly understand a position and place it in context.
In sum, SPs’ integrity begins with knowledge of the job.17