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There seems to be a growing consensus, both in the academic public administration literature (see eg Hondeghem (1998) and Cooper (2001)) and in the more practice oriented literature (see eg OECD (2000; 1996)), that a significant shift in public sector ethical standards is taking place in all OECD countries. Multiple explanations have been put forward to account for these changes. Many of them focus on the trend of" New Public Management" reforms that aimed to introduce private sector management techniques in the public sector and, as such, supposedly transformed the values of civil servants. Other explanations include broader changes in society, such as the increasingly critical and assertive attitude of citizens (that puts pressure on the traditional ethics of civil servants) and a more general shift in all types of societal governance. Whether the change in ethical standards is real or not, the interest in the topic …