Abstract Whistleblowing is increasingly viewed as a valuable mechanism to root out misconduct and corruption, yet we know very little about the conditions under which it is used in political parties. Building upon literature from social psychology, this study argues that the decision to blow the whistle on party colleagues is the outcome of a trade-off between two basic moral values that are particularly acute in the case of politicians: fairness and loyalty. Using a novel pre-registered survey experiment with over 1,000 Swedish politicians, this paper establishes that priming values of fairness can increase a politician’s willingness to blow the whistle against fellow party members. However, priming values of loyalty has no effect on whistleblowing intentions relative to control conditions. Results also suggest that severe misconduct is more likely to be reported only when it was committed by an individual rather than the party collectively, and that the party’s inaction is the biggest cause of external whistleblowing. The results of this study have significant implications for our understanding of the impact of organisational cultures and accountability on the behaviour of politicians.
Stephen Dawson (Thu,) studied this question.