Any study attempting to explain political attitudes in developed industrial democracies using national-level survey data collected in 2009 and 2010 faces the temptation to dismiss it. Elections in developed democracies in Europe and America have seen substantial populist shifts to the right in recent years. Moreover, any study of ethics and integrity in a particular polity is likely to be perceived as a niche study that is tied to the politics and civic culture of the polity where the study takes place.

Nicholas Allen and Sarah Birch’s study of ethics and integrity in the United Kingdom is neither a cultural nor a temporal relic, despite the use of data predating the shifts evidenced in the 2015 British parliamentary elections and the Brexit referendum. Rather, its value is secured as a comprehensive study of ethics and integrity identifying and defining the normative gap between the ethical perceptions of citizens and their elected representatives. Allen and Birch focus on the micro-level perceptions of integrity and political ethics that sometimes unite the British electorate and sometimes divide it.

Readers who are seeking analysis on the macro issues of electoral ethics and corruption—voter fraud, electoral integrity, and legitimacy—should look elsewhere. The authors maintain a narrow focus on lower levels of political misconduct involving members of Parliament (MPs) that include, among other behaviors, the diversion of public resources for personal use, nepotism, cronyism, and, particularly, conflicts of interest. For a nation that is generally regarded both internally and externally as having low levels of corruption, the authors seek to understand why the trust of the British people in their elected representatives continues to decline. The authors’ analysis confirms that persistent perceptions of politician misconduct breeds both a disregard for law and an unwillingness to follow leaders among citizens. In the long term, skepticism about the ethics of public leaders decreases citizen engagement and voluntary participation in politics.

There is scarcely a theory of political behavior, electoral behavior, public opinion, or political psychology that is not touched on by Allen and Birch, and they have integrated these theories into the foundation of their analysis. Analyzing perceptions of ethics from the perspective of the MPs and political elites on the one hand and the common folk on the other, the authors identify a normative gulf that separates the elected MPs from their constituents. Officeholders and candidates are relatively sophisticated in excusing behavior that wins elections, enables policy creation, and enhances standing among their legislative and party colleagues. The elected representative often defines his or her behavior in terms of narrow legal rulings or perspectives that Bruce Jennings has termed “moral minimalism.” Common citizens, the authors note, are less forgiving.

The authors suggest that for politicians, making excessive campaign promises is something one does to win elections. The failure to follow up on those promises is, for the elected representative, often an unfortunate consequence of changing priorities and political realities. Allen and Birch find that citizens are not so sanguine about campaign promises and perceptions. The candidate who makes excessive promises to win election is perceived as having breached the ethical norm of honesty. Thus, dishonesty can be both a character flaw of a candidate and a breach of ethics that speaks to the candidate’s integrity. The same can be said about parties that promise much and later fail to fulfill their promises. To a party, spin is a common communication practice for framing a political message; to the public, it is often an act of concealment that brings ethical judgments into play.

The causes of the ethical gap and its consequences are laid in large part at the feet of the news media. Allen and Birch sketch out a new dynamic that has media companies covering and promoting stories about government scandals with the sole purpose of attracting consumers. In the steady rain of scandal-related stories amplified by coverage and drama, the public fails to recognize that the misconduct is being undertaken by a small minority of elected representatives. The news media do not so much undermine trust in elected representatives as create an aura of suspicion about the behaviors and motivations of all elected representatives. Politicians find it difficult to respond to this mistrust, in part because of partisanship. As the authors wryly note, in the tribal setting of politics there is little thought among political opponents to collectively guard their honor (p. 189).

To a certain extent, Allen and Birch are correct about the news media. Certainly, news organizations are struggling for readers, listeners, and viewers, and they are willing to highlight dramatic and controversial stories in order to attract consumers of their news. But while it is easy to focus on the messenger, the message sender figures in the equation as well. In many cases, the story of ethical breaches originates with the partisan opposition.

The rise of media politics in campaigns is another factor that Allen and Birch recognize but do not fully develop. Parties are still the effective force in organizing legislatures, but in the electoral arena, media politics, with its long-standing emphasis on image, has become more important. Media politics is image politics, which is popular among candidates because it is hard to argue with an image, minimizing the need to be conversant on policy. But images can be attacked, and that means that parties and candidates in Great Britain and elsewhere frequently use questions about their opponents’ ethics to undermine their opponents’ images. The use of ethical allegations and suggestions in negative advertising grows in modern campaigns because it works, but it also denigrates the public’s sense of integrity among politicians. One of the tactics employed by the populist parties to undermine the dominance of the leading parties was to play on the discontent and dissatisfaction of the electorate with the status quo. Allen and Birch are no strangers to this idea. Their study supports a suggestion that probity is more important to voters than candidate or party performance (p. 75).

While it may be easy to dismiss a study of British attitudes towards ethics and integrity based on 2009–10 data as dated, this is certainly not the case with Allen and Birch’s study. It stands as a model for how to study public attitudes toward elected politicians, and the election of Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election suggests the need for similar analysis in the American setting. Trump’s dismissal of conflict-of-interest concerns and his family’s tone-deaf response to profiting from the presidency suggests a coming debate over American perceptions of ethics, integrity, and misconduct that is likely to exceed the existing legal framework governing the ethics of elected officials. Even as this review was being written in early 2017, the Republican House caucus secretly voted to amend its rules to abolish independent investigations of ethics breaches, a move that was rolled back by a substantial public outcry and a tweet from President-Elect Trump. That would speak to the very gap between public and elite perceptions of acceptable ethical behavior that Allen and Birch have so aptly identified.