418 Global Ethics for Leadership
of rules with the intangibility of virtues. We can measure progress to-
wards rules adoption and rules compliance. But, how do we measure
advances in respect, trust, integrity, or stewardship?
The ultimate explanation for the elevation of rules in international
organizations is political. International organizations rely upon the con-
sensus and universal agreement of their members. Where members are
sovereign governments^324 , all legislative decisions are political in nature.
Of the documents adopted by the UN that describe in some respect ex-
pectations for ethical conduct by staff members, all except the Secretary
General Bulletins, Administrative Circulars, and Information Circulars
were adopted by Member States through the operation of the General
Assembly and its standing committee structures. It is admirable that the
highest decision-making body of the United Nations pays attention to
behavioral rules and staff conduct expectations. Yet, the multiplicity of
these pronouncements reveals how much easier it is to legislate compli-
ance than it is to agree on a core set of universal ethical virtues to which
all UN staff should aspire.
Ethics Office had outlived its usefulness because it had already provided advice
to Management on a sufficient number of ethics-related policies. As a result, she
just could not see why her committee should positively recommend a biennial
budget for the Office. Once enough rules were adopted, she reasoned, there no
longer existed a good reason to continue funding an Ethics Office. 324
Because international organizations are nearly always the product of negoti-
ated international treaties, agreement among divergent Member States precedes
action. As argued below, the political and politicized nature of international
organizational decision-making has negatively impacted the ability of the United
Nations to adopt a clear set of ethical virtues that guide the behavior of staff
members. It can also be argued that the politicized atmosphere will prevent the
institution from ever articulating its own organizational values that guide and
provide direction for its own conduct. Politicians are content regulating the be-
havior of others. But politicians are rarely sanguine when faced with adopting
rules that control their own behavior. We must leave for another day a conversa-
tion about whether the UN should consider adopting a set of virtues that apply to
the personal conduct of the Member State representatives and delegates who
participate in the UN’s organizational life.