As we saw in the last chapter, money has been central to many of the major scandals that have rocked British politics, up to and including the 2009 expenses controversy. Money has never been considered the only cause of impropriety, of course, but it has long been viewed as the principal cause, and not without some justification. For similar reasons, protecting the integrity of political processes from the potentially corrupting influence of financial benefits has preoccupied legal and institutional attempts to promote high standards of conduct amongst Britain’s political elite.

In different ways, these two features of the wider ethical landscape – the inevitable cases of political misconduct and the narrow institutional focus on conflict of interest – both point to the subject of this chapter: citizens’ expectations of politicians’ behaviour. On the one hand, citizens’ expectations are likely to be a major factor in their evaluations and perceptions of political conduct and their response to alleged impropriety. Integrity evaluations are based in part on prior beliefs about what constitutes appropriate or desirable conduct. If we are fully to understand such judgements at an individual level, we obviously need to know something of the expectations that inform them. On the other hand, systematic variations in expectations may help to explain aggregate-level disaffection with the general conduct of politics. As has been reported in the context of other liberal democracies, citizens often disagree with political elites as to what is actually acceptable behaviour among elected representatives (Jackson and Smith 1996; McAllister 2000; Atkinson and Bierling 2005). Such disagreement may help to explain why politicians continue to engage in practices that violate popular norms of ethical behaviour. As Ian McAllister (2000: 35) notes: ‘If voters’ expectations about the proper conduct of politicians are continually frustrated, then it has the potential to undermine public confidence in the democratic system as a whole.’