Ethics in Public Institutions in the State of Sonora

Abstract

About Sonoran society, today brings with it a problem of ethics, which has been dragging on for generations. Both the issue of ethics in the field of public institutions and that of good governance are really core issues in the context of a society like the present one. Therefore, the Mexican public administration is in a historical process of institutional change that represents a transition from a system of personal loyalties to an institutional system based on strengthening and attachment to institutions, based on new rules in the governmental scope. Thus, institutional change is a complicated process because the changes that have taken place at the margin may be the consequence of changes in standards, informal limitations and various kinds of effectiveness and enforcement. In addition, institutions generally change incrementally, not discontinuously. Therefore, greater economic growth is a necessary condition to get out of underdevelopment and according to the literature, an important factor to achieve the above is the institutions. However, the relationship between corruption and economic growth depends on the institutional framework, it is assumed that when institutions do not function properly, corruption can replace the lack of institutional functions; on the contrary, if institutions function correctly, corruption acts to the detriment of production, by obstructing the proper functioning of the former. Likewise, corruption has attracted the attention of economists and international institutions over the past two decades, and efforts have been made to measure it and analyze its causes and effects on the economy. And, for many years now, Mexico faces very serious problems to let do and let go of dishonest practices and completely contrary to ethics, both public administration and private initiative. Here there are no victims or executioners. For an act of corruption to occur, at least, two parties are required. "Corruption affects the less favored classes. However, given the imperative to improve accountability and strengthen the relationship with citizens, open government has been placed among the main aspirations of many in order to improve government practices and contribute to democratic consolidation. Thus, the steps that the government has had to take in terms of transparency and accountability have had to be giant (in comparison with other nations) to be in the international concert, due to several factors, internal and external, the internal they occur in the measure that the Institutions end up being perceived as great entities full of corruption and mismanagement of the administration. However, the principle of transparency has been widely accepted throughout the world, at least in the discourse. As a result, few public officials openly express their opposition to the disclosure of public information. In other words, it has the perverse effect that the true opposition to transparency is rarely transparent. In this context, the losers will do what they have to do to limit themselves to pretending that they meet the legal requirements and the civil criteria. But democracy not only has the electoral component, that is, the openness and competitiveness of access to power, but it is also measured by the way that power is exercised; and there the key element is that of accountability, the capacity of institutions to call their rulers to account and, if they discover abuses of power and anomalies in the exercise of government, punish them politically, administratively and legally, according to the case. As Serrano Sánchez (2009: 224) states, he proposes to create an organ dedicated to "be attentive to the behavior of the rulers", to be concerned about their "attitudes". Within the conditions in which a bureaucracy must work, the issue of transparency is not born with it, it will be a work carried out from within and from society as a whole.