---
title: "Conflict of interest"
chunk: 7/10
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_of_interest"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:27:55.281412+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Regulating conflict of interest in government is an aim of political ethics. Public officials are expected to put service to the public and their constituents ahead of their personal interests. Conflict of interest rules are intended to prevent officials from making decisions in circumstances that could reasonably be perceived as violating this duty of office. Limiting conflicts is vital to the success of a democracy.
Rules in the executive branch tend to be stricter and easier to enforce than in the legislative branch. This is visible through one study that highlights how members of Congress with specific stock investments may vote on regulatory and interventionist legislation. Two problems make legislative ethics of conflicts difficult and distinctive. 
First, as James Madison wrote, legislators should share a "communion of interests" with their constituents. Legislators cannot adequately represent their constituents' interests without also representing some of their own. As Senator Robert S. Kerr said, "I represent the farmers of Oklahoma, although I have large farm interests. I represent the oil business in Oklahoma...and I am in the oil business...They don't want to send a man here who has no community of interest with them, because he wouldn't be worth a nickel to them." The problem is distinguishing special interests from all constituents' general interests.
Second, the "political interests" of legislatures include campaign contributions, which they need to get elected and which are generally not illegal and not the same as a bribe. But under many circumstances, they can have the same effect. The problem is how to keep the secondary interest in raising campaign funds from overwhelming what should be their primary interest—fulfilling the duties of office.
Political campaign contributions dominate politics in the United States in many ways. Candidates are often not considered "credible" unless they have a campaign budget far beyond what could reasonably be raised by citizens of ordinary means. The impact of this money can be found in many places, most notably in studies of how campaign contributions affect legislative behavior. For example, sugar in the United States has been roughly double the international price for over half a century. In the 1980s, this added $3 billion to the annual budget of U.S. consumers, according to Stern, who provided the following summary of one part of how this happens:

This $3 billion translates into $41 per household per year. This is, in essence, a tax collected by a nongovernmental agency. It is a cost imposed on consumers by governmental decisions, but never considered in any standard tax collection data.
Stern notes that sugar interests contributed $2.6 million to political campaigns, representing well over a $1,000 return for each $1 contributed to political campaigns. This, however, does not include the cost of lobbying. Lessig cites six studies that consider the cost of lobbying with campaign contributions on various issues considered in Washington, D.C. These studies produced estimates of the anticipated return on each $1 invested in lobbying and political campaigns ranging from $6 to $220. Lessig notes that clients who pay tens of millions of dollars to lobbyists typically receive billions.
Lessig insists that this does not mean any legislator has sold their vote. One of the possible explanations Lessig gives for this phenomenon is that the money helped elect candidates who were more supportive of the issues pushed by the large amount of money spent on lobbying and political campaigns. He notes that if any money perverts democracy, it is the large contributions beyond the budgets of citizens of ordinary means; small contributions from common citizens have long been considered to support democracy.
When such large sums become virtually essential to a politician's future, it generates a substantive conflict of interest, contributing to a fairly well-documented distortion of the nation's priorities and policies.
Beyond this, whether elected or not, governmental officials often leave public service to work for companies affected by legislation they helped enact or companies they used to regulate. This practice is called the "revolving door". Former legislators and regulators are accused of (a) using inside information for their new employers or (b) compromising laws and regulations in hopes of securing lucrative employment in the private sector. This possibility creates a conflict of interest for all public officials whose future may depend on the revolving door.

=== Healthcare ===

The influence of the pharmaceutical industry on medical research has been a major cause for concern. In 2009, a study found that "a significant number of academic institutions" do not have clear guidelines for relationships between Institutional Review Boards and industry. The medical-industrial complex describes the interaction between physicians' conflict of interest with for-profit healthcare, continuing medical education, and patients' ethical considerations.
In contrast to this viewpoint, an article and associated editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine in May 2015 emphasized the importance of pharmaceutical industry-physician interactions for the development of novel treatments, and argued that moral outrage over industry malfeasance had unjustifiably led many to overemphasize the problems created by financial conflicts of interest.  The article noted that major healthcare organizations such as the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health, the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, the World Economic Forum, the Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, and the Food and Drug Administration had encouraged greater interactions between physicians and industry to bring greater benefits to patients.