Ethics Come to Louisiana

Rising conservative star and now-governor of Louisiana seems to be on the side of the angels with this successful ethics reform package that should clean up some of the bayou muck off the state's legendarily shady politics.

It does seem to me, though, that the condition of a jurisdiction's formal policies on government ethics are more likely to be a symptom than a cause of the actual state of play. If you have the relevant social conditions to support good government -- competent media, engaged citizenry, civil society groups that can form the basis of electoral coalitions, a political culture that values honesty -- then a politician who engages in a lot of shady behavior is likely to find himself voted out of office whether or not the shadiness in question is formally illegal. Conversely, absent adequate social conditions even the most admirable legal framework becomes a dead letter -- nobody investigates violations and/or nobody cares. At the end of the day there are always going to be loopholes in whatever scheme you create. You see good government when and where the citizens want it and are able to punish those who don't give it to them.

Comments

Jindal is on the side of ethics reform as a campaign issue. In practice, not so much.

See this archive of Jindal posts from NOLA blogger Oyster.

http://righthandthief.blogspot.com/search/label/Jindal

Posted by joejoejoe | February 29, 2008 11:53 AM

"You see good government when and where the citizens want it and are able to punish those who don't give it to them."

Quite possibly the most insightful thing anyone has ever said on a political blog. EVER.

Posted by Sajid | February 29, 2008 11:59 AM

"You see good government when and where the citizens want it and are able to punish those who don't give it to them."

Quite possibly the most insightful thing anyone has ever said on a political blog. EVER.

Posted by Sajid | February 29, 2008 12:00 PM

Yes, but it's still true that "ethics reform" laws can be a catalyst that can help move us from the corruption equilibrium to the non-corruption equilibrium.

Posted by ed | February 29, 2008 12:09 PM

"A Republic - if you can keep it."
-B. Franklin

Posted by low-tech cyclist | February 29, 2008 12:13 PM

Like joejoejoe, I would suggest reading some local Looziana blogs before getting into this issue. Oyster and his blogroll have covered and covered and covered Dragon-Slayer Jindal and his two-faced "approach" to corruption.

Let's just say that we are not, as some might say, audaciously hopeful...

Posted by alli | February 29, 2008 12:25 PM

It's hard to fault cynicism as the proper attitude with which to approach Louisiana politics. Perhaps the best governor the state has had in the modern era, F. Edwin Edwards, is currently wearing an orange jumpsuit in Club Fed instead of his usual bespoke models.

But it would be a mistake to write off either this reform package, or Bobby Jindal. Anyone who's been disgusted by the way Katrina aid, when it shows up, is often stolen by the Usual Suspects, and the way the disaster response was screwed up locally, should welcome this administration as at least a step in the right direction, and perhaps a sea change.

Geaux Tigers!

Posted by Robert Powell | February 29, 2008 12:39 PM

Ne laissez pas les bon temps rouler!

Posted by CJColucci | February 29, 2008 12:45 PM

Kinda. There wasn't a groundswell of ethics reform which propelled Jindal to victory. He was the heir apparent after both losing to Blanco the last election cycle and her dismal Katrina performance. He just happened to choose ethics as one of his platforms and did a pretty good job of pushing it through the legislature.

Of course, from the Longs (Huey and Earl) all the way through William Jefferson, there's a special kind of politics here in Louisiana that's acceptable. The citizenry's gotten used to it and maybe the top-down effort's whats needed. Waiting for the bottom-up effort hasn't really worked.

(Perhaps it's analogous to sports where performance enhancement drugs are so rampant and the public so compliant that it takes whole gobs of money spent on PERJURY trials of the 2 best baseball players in the last 20 years to reform the system, no?)

Posted by Adi | February 29, 2008 7:37 PM

Sorry Sajid, but Matt's post pretty much lacks all insight. It's not how it works at all in the extreme case, and as an Obamabot he should know better. There has been systematic oppression here for generations, and the majority regular people who are not on the take have no sense that it is even possible to have anything different.

The magnitude of the injustice is the most disorienting thing about moving here. I'm still being freshly shocked by the state of affairs. (We don't have an inspector general? Or an auditor? Wait, our public defenders are paid from parking tickets??)

There is just no hope of change, and it's in a way that goes far beyond cynicism (that, I'm used to). There's a full on "I'm getting mine" attitude that pervades the whole culture. And this is before the external injustices were piled on by the Katrina flood (which Oyster and I and others
documented pretty well over at Josh's place.)

So it is important that Jindal do some leading from the top to give people a sense that something might be done (though that will take time), and it is a little unrealistic to expect that he would be completely squeaky clean in all this. There are so many people who make their livelihoods off this corruption, that he faces strongly entrenched opposition even among his supporters (who are trying make sure that their gravy train is the last one to go off the rails.

Half of the ethics reform proposed is about enforcement funding and transparency; the "ethics laws" that presently exist are actually pretty damn draconian.

Posted by nolaboyd | February 29, 2008 8:18 PM

"You see good government when and where the citizens want it and are able to punish those who don't give it to them."

Oh please. You must have had a hard time figuring out how to puncture the Jindal balloon, such as it is, if the best you can come up with is this prissy little bit of uninspired schollmarmism.

Posted by JM Hanes | March 1, 2008 12:47 AM

Your second paragraph here is basically a restatement of a good chunk of Machiavelli’s argument in the Discourses, which is repeated in various other places, for instance in the Federalist Papers.

It's reasonably well stated here though.

Posted by Jacob Rus | March 10, 2008 5:01 AM