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‘Sobriety, human dignity and public morality’: ethical standards in

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DOI: 10.1080/09540962.2021.1948671

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‘Sobriety, human dignity and public morality’: ethical standards in Kazakhstan

Riccardo Pelizzo and Colin Knox

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https://doi.org/10.1080/09540962.2021.1948671

5
‘Sobriety, human dignity and public morality’: ethical standards in Kazakhstan 65

Riccardo Pelizzo and Colin Knox

Graduate School of Public Policy, Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan
10 70
ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Kazakhstan, like other post-Soviet countries, is struggling to address residual issues of corruption and Corruption; ethics; good
weak ethical standards within a wider initiative to promote good governance. From 1997 onwards, it governance; Kazakhstan;
has introduced several iterations of codes of ethics and professional conduct. These efforts have post-Soviet countries; public
sector; public administration;
culminated in the appointment of ethics commissioners in each ministry and government agency.
15 public sector reforms 75
This article considers how effective they have been in enforcing ethical standards through primary
data collected from three groups: aspiring civil servants; in-service officials; and, ethics
commissioners. The research finds that commissioners have much higher tolerance levels towards
ethical dilemmas and lack consistency in making judgements, which limits confidence in their
roles as enforcement officers.

20 IMPACT 80
Ethics commissioners have been appointed in Kazakhstan to oversee the implementation of an ethics
code applicable across the public sector. The ethics code is one of several policy instruments being
used to tackle corruption in several post-Soviet countries. But commissioners find themselves in a
dilemma. They are employed by the same organizations for which they have oversight. To
highlight unethical behaviour can be viewed as an act of disloyalty. This article therefore considers
25 how tolerant commissioners are of unethical conduct relative to two peer groups of officials 85
(aspiring civil servants and in-service officials), and raises questions as to their independence.

30 Introduction
The title of this article is taken from the ethics code which
public officials in Kazakhstan must abide by when off-duty.
More generally, the code compels civil servants ‘to invest all
their strength, knowledge and experience in their
35 professional activities, to serve their homeland, the Republic
of Kazakhstan, impartially and honestly’ (Judicial Council of
the Republic of Kazakhstan, 2017, Clauses 1 & 7.1). These
clauses might suggest state overreach into the personal
lives of officials and an appeal to a sense of patriotism,
40 respectively. An important question to pose is whether such
an ethics code influences the behaviour of civil servants?
This article suggests that the answer to this question will
depend on how one defines ethical values, in a broad or
narrow sense. One person’s perception of, or tolerance for,
45 corruption may be different from another’s. This has
implications for the implementation and enforcement of
ethical standards.
In recent years, Kazakhstan has taken steps to promote
good governance, of which ethics is an integral part. It did
50 so because the government realized that by: improving the
quality of the government, increasing its effectiveness,
reducing corruption, improving the regulatory framework,
and strengthening accountability, it could create the
conditions for sustained economic growth and socio-
55 economic development. Kazakhstan’s efforts to promote
good governance are in line with a stream of inquiry that,
for the past two decades, has consistently shown that good
governance matters in promoting economic growth, in
making it sustainable, and in creating the conditions for
60 faster progress along the developmental path (Mauro, 1995;
Kaufmann et al., 1999). One of the reforms implemented by
the government in recent years was the adoption of an
© 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
90
ethics code and the appointment of commissioners to
enforce its content. The extent to which these reforms have
been successful is not entirely clear but the analyses that
we conducted for this article shed light on why a good idea
(the adoption of an ethics code) failed to be as successful
95
as the reformers had envisioned.
Specifically, we show that two of the conditions which the
literature regards as necessary for the successful
administration of an ethics code were not satisfied
(Skelcher & Snape, 2001). First, what civil servants perceived
100
to be acceptable ethical practice varied significantly and,
second, perceptions of ethics commissioners towards
prudent conduct were even more diverse. In the absence of
homogenous ethical standards, or a shared understanding
of which types of conduct could be regarded as acceptable,
105
several problems emerged. These included: inconsistent
application of ethical standards; the impression that
punished civil servants were unfairly targeted for certain
behaviour while others were not sanctioned; and,
ultimately, the inability to contribute little to the promotion
110
of good governance, a key reason for the code’s introduction.
Our study assessed ethical values and attitudes in the
Kazakhstan civil service, which comprises around 100,000
officials. Our findings offer lessons for other post-Soviet
countries with similar political, social and economic
115
contexts to Kazakhstan. Only four of the 15 post-Soviet
countries have a positive score on the World Bank’s
Worldwide Governance Indicator ‘control of corruption’
(Estonia, Lithuania, Georgia and Latvia, respectively). This
article is organized in the following way. In the first section
120
we review the literature on ethics and codes of conduct
and point out the difference between these. We consider
the conditions under which ethics codes are more likely to
 2 R. PELIZZO AND C. KNOX
be successfully implemented. Building on this review, we
investigate whether the lack of homogeneous ethical
standards might have been one of the reasons that
prevented a more successful implementation of the ethics
125 code in Kazakhstan and better enforcement through the
ethics commissioners. In our final section we draw some
conclusions and formulate some practical recommendations
as to how the ethics code might be more successfully
implemented.
130
Ethics codes
The study of ethics codes, in spite of a long tradition
135 (Monypenny, 1953) which originated in the private sector
(Florini, 2003), experienced a renaissance at the beginning
of the new millennium, when scholars and practitioners
realized that ethical standards were part and parcel of the
wider need for good governance to drive economic growth
140 and reduce income inequalities (Grindle, 2004; Levy, 2015).
While some studies focused on defining good governance,
on measuring it, and on showing its developmental
dividends, a second stream of inquiry examined, instead,
what could be done and which reforms could be
145 implemented to promote ‘good enough’ governance
Q1 (Grindle, 2017). The study of codes of conduct gained
¶ unprecedented attention because their adoption by
parliamentarians, judges, and civil servants was regarded as
one of the ways in which the principles and the practice of
150 good governance could be promoted. Bruce (1996) and
Whitton (2001) make the distinction between codes of ethics
and codes of conduct: arguing that the former is best
regarded as a general statement of core values linked to
the professional role of officials, whereas the latter tend to
155 be about the interpretation of these values for particular
organizations. Gilman (2005, p. 12) suggested that both
types of codes were complementary, ‘principles and values
are embedded in all ethics codes and codes of conduct,
either implicitly or explicitly’.
160 The adoption of ethics codes was increasingly linked, as
part of a battery of measures, to tackling corruption and
improving governance. Bruce (1998) and Michael (2012)
showed how ethics education and the adoption of codes
affected the perception of corruption. Garcia-Sanchez et al.
165 (2011, p. 194) examined the effectiveness of ethics codes in
reducing corruption in 154 countries and found that in
developing countries, ‘control of corruption is mainly
associated with the institutional capacity of the national
administration and the citizens’ education’. They concluded
170 that ethics codes ‘do not seem to be effective in the control
of corruption in the public sphere’. Meyer-Sahling, et al.
(2020) looked at the effect of disciplinary codes and code of
ethics on containing corruption within the civil service in
Poland and found that, when used together, they can
175 contain kickbacks as one form of corruption. Nkyabonaki
(2019, p. 1209) considered the effectiveness of a public
service code of ethics in Tanzania and deemed it to be
‘highly ineffective due to the ecology of public
management in the country’. Brauns and Mdlazi (2015,
180 p. 208) called for much greater use of ethics, codes of
conduct, morals and professionalism ‘as a bulwark against
corruption and unethical conduct in the public sector in
South Africa’.
While obvious attention was paid to how codes of conduct
impacted on corruption, a growing body of scholarship
focused instead on the challenges to, and conditions for,
the successful implementation of ethics codes. In this
respect, for instance, Ali and Amosa (2014) lamented that 185
the successful implementation of an ethics code for civil
servants in Fiji was prevented by the fact that little was
done to secure a proper understanding of the motives and
substance of the code and to enforce compliance. Sakyi
and Bawole (2009, p. 73), in their analysis of the West 190
African experience, noted a host of problems in
implementing codes of conduct such as: ‘general weakness
in leadership, the syndrome of leniency, lack of knowledge,
ignorance about the code, and weak enforcement’. In their
analysis of Ghana, Akosa et al. (2020) noted that the Q2 195
implementation of an ethics code faced both internal and ¶
external challenges; while in the case of Nigeria, Idowu
(2000) remarked that: strong defence mechanisms for civil
servants; the ambiguity of some provisions such as those
concerning gifts; and, the limited scope of the provisions of 200
the code (where sanctions applied to bribe takers but not
bribe givers), were the main reasons why the code failed to
have a greater systemic impact.
Existing research, particularly studies in developing
countries, would therefore suggest that success or failure of 205
ethics codes is contingent upon institutional factors, such
as how sanctions are administered, the clarity of the
clauses, and the cultural context. The importance of culture
for the functioning of political systems, institutional
arrangements, and organizational performance has long 210
been acknowledged. Weber (2002) used culture, in the form
of the Protestant ethic, to explain the emergence of
capitalism. Pro-democratic culture is what secured,
according to Lipset (1959), the consolidation and the
survival of democratic regimes. Culture, in the guise of civic 215
culture, accounted for the variation in how democratic
regimes function (Verba & Almond, 1963), while culture was
identified in recent years as the main determinant of
institutional performance (Putnam, 1993).
Culture, with few exceptions, was assumed to be 220
homogeneous at the supra-national (Huntington, 1993),
national and sub-national levels. Cultural homogeneity was
therefore viewed, inter alia, as a key determinant for the
success of good governance reforms such as the adoption/
implementation of an ethics code. In this respect, Skelcher 225
and Snape (2001) argued that successful implementation of
an ethics code depended upon whether the individuals,
whom the code is expected to guide, have homogeneous
ethical standards. Officials should therefore have a common
understanding of what represents acceptable behaviour. 230
Yet, while early scholarship was oblivious as to whether, or
to what extent, these ethical standards were homogeneous,
several studies went on to show that the assumption of
homogenous ethical standards is unwarranted. Ethical
standards are heterogeneous in the British parliament 235
(Mancuso, 1999; Allen, 2003), in the Indonesian parliament Q3 Q4
(Pelizzo & Ang, 2008), and in the Kazakhstani civil service ¶ ¶
(Orazbekova & Shegirbayev, 2017). One of the interesting
findings in this line of research was that the perception of
corruption is affected, filtered, or shaped by the ethical 240
standards of a respondent—a result that was confirmed by
the analysis of both Indonesian and Kazakhstani data
(Pelizzo & Omarov, 2019). In sum, these studies produced a

stream of scholarship which underlined the importance of
homogenizing ethical standards to create the conditions for
the successful implementation of ethics codes (Pelizzo &
Ang, 2008). Those charged with administering or oversight
245 of ethics codes (ethics commissioners or Council) should
therefore play a key role in homogenizing standards.
Given the fact that the absence of homogenous ethical
standards may prevent the successful implementation of an
ethics code, in the remainder of the article we explore
250 whether, or to what extent, the absence of homogeneous
ethical standards resulted in an implementation deficit, at
best, or failure, at worst. In other words, did heterogenous
ethics standards between officials and the commissioners
create circumstances which inexorably led to the ineffectual
255 application of the ethics code? Before turning our attention
to the primary data, we set the context for our research
tracing the background to the introduction of the ethics
code in Kazakhstan, a progressive central Asian country
with significant development ambitions.
260
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan is a post-Soviet country which gained its
independence in 1991. It has a population of 18.6 million
265 people who reside in a vast territory equivalent to the size
of western Europe. It is strategically located between the
Chinese and south Asia markets on its south-eastern
border, and Russia and western Europe on its north-western
border. Its economic growth has been impressive since
270 independence, moving from a lower middle-income
country to upper middle-income in less than two decades.
It has suffered, however, from the global economic
slowdown, an overreliance on the extractive industries and,
more recently, the impact of the pandemic. It continues to
275 struggle with its post-Soviet legacy of a highly centralizsed
government system, a large number of state-owned
enterprises, weak private and NGO sectors, and endemic
corruption. An important government strategic goal is for
Kazakhstan to join the top 30 developed countries by 2050
280 (Janenova & Knox, 2017; Knox, 2020). Key to this
achievement will be a strong governance performance,
including improving government effectiveness and the
control of corruption. While Kazakhstan has made some
progress on these measures over the past 10 years, the
285 Q5 Worldwide Governance Indicators (2020) show it has a
¶ significant way to go (Government effectiveness = +0.12;
Control of corruption = −0.32. Scores range from −2.5 to
+2.5 with higher values representing better governance).
Corruption remains a ‘wicked’ problem, despite a battery
290 of preventative and control measures taken by the
Kazakhstan government to tackle this issue. These measures
have included: a raft of legislation; a dedicated agency to
fight corruption; criminal charges against high-profile
figures as an example to deter others; the introduction of
295 open government measures to increase transparency of
officials; and, successful e-government mechanisms which
limit state–citizen personal interactions and hence the
opportunity for petty corruption (O’Connor et al., 2019).
The introduction of an ethics code and the appointment of
300 ethics commissioners can therefore be seen as part of this
wider preventative toolkit to tackle corruption among
officials. There is no suggestion here that ethics
commissioners alone can directly impact on corruption
PUBLIC MONEY & MANAGEMENT 3
indicators (Janenova & Knox, 2019). As early as June 1997,
an ethics framework was introduced for civil servants
signifying, at a general level, some ethical norms but
without any sanctions for their violation. This appeal to a
sense of ethical propriety had little impact however, and 305
measures were strengthened with the introduction of the
ethics code for civil servants in 2015. There followed the
creation of ethics commissioners to oversee the code, and
‘respected employees’ were selected by general secretaries
to undertake these duties in addition to their regular job. 310
The ethics code included provisions for the behaviour of
public officials both on and off-duty. In the former,
government employees were expected to be: honest, fair,
modest, to comply with generally accepted moral and
ethical standards, and to show politeness and correctness in 315
dealing with citizens and colleagues. When off-duty,
officials should not be involved in anti-social behaviour,
including being in public places while intoxicated,
offending human dignity and public morality. At the early
stages, ethics commissioners were selected based on their 320
standing and respect among colleagues for this unpaid
role. Given the unfolding burden of responsibility, in July
2017 the post of ethics commissioner was recognized as a
full-time, paid post. Their role includes: providing advice to
officials on compliance with the ethical code; monitoring 325
observance by officials; and, making recommendations to
the leadership of the state body when violations occur.
A formative assessment of the role of the commissioners
revealed several problems: a lack of ownership and political
commitment at the highest level to the ethics code and its 330
enforcement; institutional weaknesses in that ethics
commissioners had only powers of recommendation to
their superiors, upon whom their current and future job
prospects depended; and, problems gathering evidence of,
and making judgements on, off-duty behaviour of officials, 335
which could potentially infringe their privacy and personal
human rights (Janenova & Knox, 2019). Our research
investigated whether an additional problem was that the
key actors (commissioners and civil servants) perceived
unethical practice differently because of dissimilar tolerance 340
levels towards corrupt practices within and between these
actors.
Data analysis and findings
345
To test the homogeneity of ethics standards across civil
servants and ethics commissioners in Kazakhstan, we
collected data from three separate groups: aspiring civil
servants; in-service officials; and ethics commissioners.
Group selection was a convenience sample of interested 350
stakeholders: those about to enter the civil service; serving
officials with experience of ethical issues; and
commissioners charged with enforcing the ethics code.
There are clear limitations to convenience sampling—in
particular, the inability to generalize the findings. This 355
approach was adopted for four main reasons. First, given
the sensitivities of the topic, a probability sample would
have elicited a very low take-up. Second, the convenience
sample was populated with key informants who had either
a detailed knowledge of the topic as practitioners (in- 360
service officials and ethics commissioners) or aspiring civil
servants with views on ethical standards. Third, as Bryman
(2008, p. 183) argued, ‘social research is frequently based
 4 R. PELIZZO AND C. KNOX
on convenience sampling’. Fourth, Benoit and Laver (2006)
noted that when conducting an expert survey, a sample of
30 respondents is sufficient.
The first dataset was constructed by administering a
365 survey to 46 Master’s in Public Policy students with
ambitions to join the civil service, which we called ‘aspiring
civil servants’. The survey instrument was originally
developed to generate an ethical map of British
parliamentarians (Mancuso, 1995) and, a few years later and
370 with some modifications, of the Indonesian
parliamentarians (Pelizzo & Ang, 2008).
Since Sartori (1970) noted that concepts are culture-
specific, or culture-bound, one can legitimately wonder
about whether a survey instrument designed for a
375 developed European, liberal-democratic polity such as the
UK can meaningfully be applied in a developing, non-
European, imperfectly democratic setting. After all, if culture
affects and reflects respondents’ attitudes, and if the
homogeneity/heterogeneity of ethical standards is assessed
380 on the basis of respondents’ attitudes towards a series of
(un)ethical scenarios, then one could easily conclude that
the differences in the tolerance levels towards corruption
and in the consistency with which ethical standards are
employed could simply be a function of cultural differences.
385 Worse, one could go as far as claiming that because of the
cultural differences between the various settings, a survey
instrument that worked well in the British case may not be
suitable for settings with a substantively different cultural
make up.
390 There are, however, two basic reasons why such a
legitimate objection can be refuted. First, the international
community for the past few decades, after discovering the
importance of good governance for developmental
purposes, has taken various steps to promote a reformist
395 agenda that could enhance the quality of government in
polities where governance was deemed to be poor. The
interventions proposed and promoted by the international
community were designed to change existing institutional
settings and adopt specific legislation, for example in the
400 field of anti-corruption, leading to cultural change. This
change comprised the adoption of a common language of
good governance and greater cross-national consistency in
the way governance issues, including corruption, should be
viewed. Using a survey instrument, originally designed for a
405 developed polity, in the context of a developing nation,
allows one to assess whether and to what extent the
promotion of a culture/ideal/language of good governance
has been successful or not. Second, and more importantly,
previous studies (Pelizzo & Ang, 2008) have shown that
410 respondents from developing polities respond to the
questions included in the survey instrument as consistently
as respondents from a developed nation.
In the current research, respondents were given a list of
scenarios (see Table 1) and they were asked to indicate
415 how corrupt they believed each circumstance was on a
seven-point scale (1 = very corrupt; 7 = non corrupt). A
second dataset was collected by administering the same
survey instrument to 34 civil servants from the Ministry of
Investment and Development, an organization where
420 elected representatives, political and administrative civil
servants are susceptible to clientelism, patronage and
corruption. While it is impossible to state how
representative the Ministry of Internal Affairs is, we know
Table 1. Ethics scenarios for aspiring and in-service officials.
Issue Scenario
School A member of parliament uses their influence to get a friend
admitted to a prestigious academic institution
Influence– A member of parliament uses their influence to get a friend or a
job relative a job 425
Contract A cabinet minister uses their influence to obtain a contract for a
firm in their constituency
Retainer A member of parliament arranges meetings and dinners in
parliament at which executives from private companies can
meet parliamentarians
Travel A member of parliament is given a first-class ticket as part of a 430
parliamentary delegation. They exchange the ticket for an
economy class ticket and pocket the difference
Pass A member of parliament requests and receives a parliamentary
pass for a lobbyist to act as a research assistant, although
their services are paid for by an outside source
Gift A member of parliament accepts a crate of wine from an
influential constituent 435
Secretary A member of parliament hires their or other family member as
their secretary
from the Anti-Corruption Agency of Kazakhstan that it
ranked among the top five most corrupt ministries in 2020 440
and therefore provides a useful case study into (un)ethical
behaviour.
The third dataset was constructed by administering a
slightly amended questionnaire that would be more
relevant for the 36 ethics commissioners in our sample. 445
Respondents were given a list of scenarios (see Table 2) and
were asked to indicate how corrupt they believed each
scenario to be.
We set out the descriptive statistics across the three
categories of respondents in Table 3. We include two 450
additive scales which we call ‘nepotism’ (the conflation of
school, influence–job and contract) and ‘self-interest’
(retainer, travel, pass, gift, and secretary). The items
included in the computation of each additive scale were
designed to capture respondents’ attitudes to two distinct 455
types of unethical behaviour: nepotism captures the
attitudes towards a type of conduct from which the
respondent (and their close family members) is (are) not
expected to derive a direct benefit; self-interest captures
instead the attitudes towards a type of conduct from which 460
the respondent or one of their family members are
expected to derive a direct benefit. School, Influence–job,
and contract fall clearly in one category, while retainer,
travel, pass, and gift fall clearly in the other. Some
465
Table 2. Ethics scenarios for ethics commissioners.
Issue Scenario
School The civil servant uses their influence and connections to ensure
that their friend is admitted to prestigious scientific 470
organizations/institutes
Influence– A civil servant uses their influence and connections to get a job
job for a friend or relative
Contract A civil servant, by using their influence, ensures signing a
contract with a related (affiliated) company
Retainer A civil servant of a high rank organizes informal meetings and
dinners where management of business companies can meet 475
with civil servants
Travel A civil servant receives a business class plane ticket as a
member of a delegation. They change their ticket to
economy class and keep the cost difference
Pass A member of parliament requests and receives parliamentary
permission to participate in a research project as a consultant
and receives a payment
480
Gift A civil servant takes a case of wine from an influential person
Secretary A political civil servant hires a family member as their secretary/
assistant
 PUBLIC MONEY & MANAGEMENT 5

Table 3. Descriptive statistics. service civil servants was somewhat different from the
Aspiring In-service wording used in the survey questionnaire administered to
civil civil Ethics ethics commissioners. In other words, we cannot say what
servants servants commissioners
Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD is the source of this discrepancy. But, regardless, this
485 School 2.23 1.72 1.88 1.65 3.58 2.11 inconsistency suggests three considerations: 545
Influence– 2.25 1.53 1.85 1.71 2.88 2.05
job . Careful attention should be paid to the wording of a survey
Contract 1.93 1.40 1.85 1.64 3 2.13
Nepotism 2.09 1.21 1.86 1.51 3.15 1.69 instrument. Even a slightly different wording could lead to
Retainer 4.64 1.60 1.71 1.59 3.91 2.02 a significantly different understanding of ethical issues
490 Travel 3.73 1.94 2.59 2.23 4.54 2.07 and, as a result, it could bias the respondents’ attitudes 550
Pass 3.38 1.86 3.29 2.34 4.8 2.23
Gift 3.84 1.77 2.76 2.18 3.69 2.22 towards ethical scenarios.
Secretary 2.91 1.67 3.76 2.39 3.41 2.08 . If the discrepancy is due to a real difference in the way the
Self- 3.67 1.21 2.82 1.58 4.09 1.29 three groups of respondents understand the ethics
interest
scenarios, it is imperative to homogenize the ethical
495 preferences across and within groups of civil servants 555
and commissioners. Without this, implementing the
ambiguity may exist as to whether secretary should be ethics code is likely to fail.
regarded as a case of nepotism or self-interest. If the civil . If civil servants have lower tolerance than ethics
servant hires a family member, the civil servant and/or their commissioners towards unethical behaviour, it is not
500 family (member) derives a direct benefit from the clear what is the need for the commissioners’ guidance 560
appointment—which is why this scenario should be on moral behaviour.
classified as self-interest. If, instead, the civil servant
appointed someone other than a family member, the civil
servant would not derive a direct benefit from the
appointment and the scenario should be treated as a case
Ethical mapping
505 565
of nepotism. While the descriptive statistics in Table 3 provide an
These additive scales are based on the idea of a ‘tolerance indication of how tolerant the three groups of respondents
score’ which divide the sample into groups with high were of corrupt and/or unethical behaviour, they do not
tolerance and a low tolerance of unethical practice provide much information on whether they use ethical
510 (Mancuso, 1995, p. 48). The scales were originally designed standards in a coherent and consistent way. In other words, 570
to capture parliamentarians’ attitudes towards constituency it is important to develop some understanding of whether
service and conflict of interest. These dimensions are more the high/low tolerance that we detected from the
relevant for politicians than for civil servants who have no descriptive statistics reflects a coherent, systematic view of
need to serve a constituency. For civil servants, however, the daily behaviour of officials. To do this, we reviewed
515 the dimensions of nepotism and self-interest are more response correlations between the ethical scenarios 575
useful descriptors from a cognitive or attitudinal point of pertaining, respectively, to nepotism and self-interest. The
view. correlations were calculated across the three categories of
The analyses of the data that we collected reveal three sets our respondents: aspiring civil servants, ethics
of findings. First, aspiring civil servants had a considerably commissioners, and civil servants from the Ministry of
520 lower level of tolerance for unethical behaviour compared Investment and Development, respectively (data on request 580
to ethics commissioners. Would-be civil servants, however, from the authors). The purpose of these correlations was
had less tolerance than officials from the Ministry of not to identify possible arrows of causality between the
Investment and Development. variables under investigation, but simply to detect whether,
Second, there are some differences as to how unethical and to what extent, respondents’ attitudes to one kind of
525 such scenarios are perceived by the three groups. For ethical scenario were consistent with the attitudes toward 585
aspiring civil servants, the ‘contract’ scenario was the most another scenario of the same kind. Specifically, high
corrupt, while the ‘retainer’ was the least corrupt. For in- correlation between variables means that they apply ethical
service civil servants, ‘retainer’ was the most corrupt, while standards consistently, while low and/or insignificant
for ethics commissioners ‘influence–job’ was the most correlations suggests that ethical standards are not used in
530 corrupt, and ‘travel’ was the least corrupt. Furthermore, a consistent fashion. Correlation values are subject to 590
commissioners demonstrated more tolerance towards each different interpretation. We were guided by Cohen (1998) Q6
of these scenarios than the other sets of respondents. who suggests that r = .30 to .49 is a medium correlation ¶
Third, while each set of respondents displayed lower and .50 to 1.0 is a large correlation. Almost half the
tolerance for ‘nepotism’ scenarios than for ‘self-interest’ significant correlations used in our analysis were large, and
535 scenarios, the difference was relatively small in the case of the remainder medium strength. 595
in-service civil servants and ethics commissioners, while it Ethical standards seem to provide considerable guidance,
was considerably larger in the case of aspiring civil servants. both cognitive and otherwise, to aspiring civil servants. In
We are not able to say whether these differences across fact, when we correlated the responses provided on each of
the three groups were due to the fact that they had a truly the five ‘self-interest’ scenarios, we found that six of the 10
540 different understanding of what is corrupt, or whether the correlations were statistically significant (data on request 600
discrepancy in the results was due to the fact that the from the authors). Similarly, when we correlated
wording of some of the questions/scenarios in the respondents’ responses on the three ‘nepotism’ scenarios,
questionnaire administered to aspiring civil servants and in- we found that two correlations coefficients out of three
 6 R. PELIZZO AND C. KNOX
were statistically significant. This sustains the claim that
ethical standards and attitudes provide guidance to
aspiring civil servants.
When we replicated the same analyses for the ethics
605 commissioners, we found that, while respondents had very
structured and consistent attitudes towards the nepotism
scenarios (all the correlation coefficients are positive, strong
and statistically significant), they did not have a similarly
structured approach to self-interest scenarios. In other
610 words, tolerance to one type of self-interest scenario
provides no guidance whatsoever as to how tolerant an
ethics commissioner will be to a different self-interest
scenario. This finding is different from previous research in
other contexts (Mancuso, 1995; Pelizzo & Ang, 2008).
615 When we performed the same analyses with the data
collected among the civil servants from the Ministry of
Investment and Development, we found that the civil
servants from the ministry employed their ethical standards
very consistently. Their position on a specific issue or
620 scenario provided an indication of how they will position
themselves vis-à-vis other scenarios. The correlation analysis
revealed that six of the 10 correlation coefficients
generated by correlating the five self-interest scenarios
were strong, positive and statistically significant.
625 Furthermore, when we correlated the responses on
nepotism scenarios, we found that all the three coefficients
were strong positive and statistically significant, so our
respondents were using their ethical standards in a
consistent way.
630 We used these two dimensions (nepotism and self-
interest) to generate a map of the ethical preferences and
ethical types in Kazakhstan. Before mapping the ethical
worlds of Kazakhstani civil servants, commissioners and
aspiring civil servants, we outline how this mapping
635 exercise was done in the past and the changes we made.
When Mancuso (1995) developed the typology that was
later employed by Pelizzo and Ang (2008), she identified
four types of individuals which we adapted for our additive
scales:
640
Ethics map typology
645 ◾ Servants: low tolerance for self-interest and high tolerance
of nepotism.
650
Colour online, B/W in print
655
660
Figure 1. Aspiring civil servants.
◾ Puritans: low tolerance for self-interest and low tolerance
of nepotism.
◾ Entrepreneurs: high tolerance for self-interest and high
tolerance of nepotism.
◾ Muddlers: high tolerance for self-interest and low tolerance 665
of nepotism.
In her analysis, Mancuso found that some members of
parliament were puritans, entrepreneurs, servants, or 670
muddlers. A similar finding was presented by Pelizzo and
Ang (2008). The findings, to some extent, were the result of
the methodology employed to segment the sample. Both
studies used the sample mean as the cut-off point on each
dimension. Since a mean cannot be computed in the 675
absence of below-average and above-average observations,
it is not surprising that these early studies found some
observations in each of the four categories generated by
using the dimensional means as cut-off points. Instead of
following Mancuso’s approach, it is better to take the 680
neutral position (at point 4) on each dimension as the cut-
off point because, in this way, categories that a priori will
be filled by at least one case will not be created. Using this
adapted methodology, we found that the majority of the
aspiring civil servants were puritans, that a fairly large 685
number of them were muddlers, a few were entrepreneurs,
and none was a servant (see Figure 1).
These findings are important for two reasons: first, they show
that, even within a relatively homogeneous group, there were
considerable differences of opinion with regard to what 690
should or should not be considered as acceptable conduct;
and, second, they show that tolerance for nepotism was
generally lower than tolerance for self-interest. Aspiring civil
servants were more inclined to condone or approve that
type of conduct from which a civil servant or their family 695
may benefit, than the types of conduct that may result in a
benefit for a third party. The data at our disposal did not
allow us to explain why aspiring civil servants feel this way
about these two types of unethical behaviour. But our
evidence provides policy-makers with a clear indication of 700
the type of norms, regulations and ethical training that may
be required to promote good governance: since aspiring
civil servants have little tolerance for nepotism, regulations
and training should be introduced to reduce tolerance
towards self-interest because that is the kind of conduct 705
that many aspiring civil servants find more acceptable.
710
715
720

725
Colour online, B/W in print
730
735
Figure 2. Ethics commissioners.
740
745
Colour online, B/W in print
750
755 Figure 3. In-service civil servants
By replicating the same analysis with the data collected
from among the ethics commissioners, we found that the
760 majority of respondents were either puritans or muddlers,
some of them were entrepreneurs, and some could be
regarded as servants (see Figure 2).
Finally, when we used the data collected by Orazbekova &
Shegirbayev (2017) for civil servants, we found, once again,
that the category of the puritans was the single most
765
popular, with a smaller number muddlers and
entrepreneurs, and that no case fell into the category of
servants (see Figure 3).
Our maps (Figures 1–3) therefore illustrate ethical
770 preferences across our three sets of respondents.
Interestingly, our data analysis shows that the ethical
world of aspiring and in-service civil servants is quite
different from the world of ethics commissioners.
Commissioners were not only more tolerant than aspiring
775 civil servants or the civil servants from the ministry on
both categories (nepotism and self-interest), but
commissioners were the only group of respondents among
whom we found servants. So, what these data show is
that, while aspiring civil servants and in-service officials
780 seem to have a very similar mindset and fairly similar
attitudes towards ethics scenarios, they do not seem to
have much in common with the commissioners. The
commissioners, as a group, had much higher tolerance for
PUBLIC MONEY & MANAGEMENT 7
785
790
795
800
805
810
815
nepotism scenarios than aspiring civil servants and in-
service civil servants. In fact, civil servants and aspiring civil
servants believed that ‘nepotism’ was not ethically justified 820
or justifiable, and was not as acceptable as engaging in
‘self-interest’ scenarios.
Conclusions
825
We began our research with the question: has the ethics code
influenced the behaviour of civil servants in Kazakhstan? If, as
we argue, the code is seen as a preventative measure in a
wider policy toolkit aimed at tackling corruption and
improving good governance, then it seems to have had 830
minimal impact. Our research finds that not only are the
ethics commissioners who ‘police’ the code much more
tolerant when it comes to making judgements on ethical
dilemmas, but they are also inconsistent as a cohort of
enforcers. Their high levels of ethical tolerance compared to 835
aspiring and in-service officials may be explained by their
job positions within ministries and public agencies. They
must report breaches of the code to their executive
secretaries (head of the ministry) who, in turn, may not
wish to draw attention to, or sanction, organizational 840
ethical misdemeanours. Ethics commissioners must also
have an eye to their own career trajectory within the public
sector which pushes their tolerance levels upwards. The
 8 R. PELIZZO AND C. KNOX
inconsistences in applying the ethics code within
commissioners as a cohort could be explained by its
breadth of coverage which extends well beyond
professional norms and strays rather loosely and
845 expansively into the personal lives of officials. In this sense,
the guidance appears to be both a code of conduct and an
ethics code. One example of the former is that civil servants
are expected ‘to show modesty and not to use their official
position to receive services’ (Code of Ethics, 7.2). Asking
850 commissioners to make judgements on issues of morality,
coupled with commissioners’ heterogeneous ethical
standards, is bound to result in inconsistencies which, in
turn, lowers confidence in their position as an enforcer of
ethical standards. Moreover, the cultural mores of
855 Kazakhstan impact on what is deemed to be ethical or
unethical. As a post-Soviet country where networks, familial
relations and clanship are pervasive, using one’s influence
as a civil servant to find a job for a friend or relative poses a
false ethical dilemma—‘what is the problem?’ In the same
860 vein, gathering evidence to prove serious ethical breaches
may rely on whistle blowers, a practice that is anathema
given the antecedents of the Soviet Union era.
The practical lessons from this research suggest
disentangling professional and personal off-duty behaviour,
865 the latter being recrafted as a separate code of conduct
rather than being incorporated into a code of ethics. In
addition, the position of ethics commissioners within
ministries needs to be reconsidered. At present, they lack
independence, and their reporting line is upwards to a
870 superior in whose hands their future career is reliant.
Reporting ethics violations can be seen as disloyal to one’s
own organization—better to ‘bury’ ethical transgressions
than to expose the ministry in a negative light. Training for
ethics commissioners is woefully inadequate, hence the
875 inconsistences in their understanding, and subordinately, in
enforcement strategies. Support for the role is ambivalent,
at best, among senior managers. These issues need to be
addressed if ethical standards are to become a potent
weapon in the fight against, corruption, nepotism and
880 clientelism in Kazakhstan. These problems are not unique to
Kazakhstan: the promotion of democracy, of good
governance, of accountability has been problematic in
several other post-Soviet countries, most notably in central
Asia (Baris et al., 2021). The evidence presented has
885 important lessons for other post-Soviet countries struggling
with the same problems.
Disclosure statement
890 No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
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