Administration As Usual? Revolving Doors and the Quiet Regulation of Political Ethics

Abstract

Ethics policies have emerged as a key aspect of the European (post)-Regulatory State. Such policies are designed to create ‘noise’, allowing media and public discourse to mobilise around the ethical lapses of those in power. The regulation of revolving doors (RD), i.e., movements in and out of government positions, is an ethics policy. However, unlike other ethics policies, RD regulation does not make transparency its central feature but constitutes what we call ‘quiet regulation’. Drawing on qualitative document analysis and interviews, we study the quiet regulation of RD for EU Commissioners. We demonstrate that quiet regulation has a dual nature: its public façade relies on independence, judicialised procedures and transparency. Conversely, its day-to-day operation is characterised by self-regulation, soft law and informality. In this way, RD regulation achieves two contradictory aims: functioning as a legitimate ethics policy while simultaneously avoiding the moral outcry that often surrounds ethics policies and the politicisation of RD, thereby normalising RD as ‘administration as usual’.