Wiener-Anspach Fellow Maria Chiara Vinciguerra, PhD student in Politics and International Relations at the University of Cambridge, is among the contributors of the book A research agenda for studies of corruption, edited by Alina Mungiu-Pippidi and Paul M. Heywood (Edward Elgar Publishing 2020). She is the author, with Michele Bocchiola and Emanuela Ceva, of the chapter “Heroes or villains? A legislative, ethical and policy assessment of whistleblowing”.
Abstract
In this chapter, the authors provide an overview – from a theoretical and empirical perspective – of the role of whistleblowing in the fight against corruption. In the first part, they illustrate strategies for the justification of whistleblowing, combining ethical and legal analyses. They then introduce two general views of whistleblowing in the contemporary debate in public ethics, which see whistleblowing either as the last resort against organizational wrongdoing or one of the best practices of organizational answerability. In the second part of the chapter, they outline current whistleblowing policy and legal practices, and evaluate their impact on curbing corruption and promoting good governance. They show how the general views introduced in the first part underpin the current whistleblowing policies and laws. In conclusion, they point at some possible directions in the research agenda of corruption and whistleblowing studies.
Maria Chiara is currently pursuing her doctoral research on “EU Policy Responses to the Migration and Refugee Crisis : the Refugee Relocation Scheme” at the ULB, under the supervision of Ramona Coman (Institute for European Studies).