CRT PRINCIPLES FOR GOVERNMENT
INTRODUCTION
Persuaded by experience that a person’s moral sense contributes to success in business
endeavors, in 1994 the Caux Round Table published certain Principles for Business as a
world standard against which business behavior could be measured.
After a decade of remarkable economic growth in many parts of the global economy, the
Caux Round Table notes that sufficient investment capital has been accumulated that,
should it be invested wisely in poor and developing countries, a dramatic reduction in
levels of poverty could be achieved for most of humanity. In the stock markets of the
world some thirty trillion US dollars are available for equity investment. Trillions more
of US dollars are available in short term money markets, in currency markets, and in
possible debt financing. There is more liquid capital available to the owners of private
business than poor countries could presently absorb into their economies.
Yet in most instances such capital is not invested where people are poor. In the minds of
many, therefore, globalization remains vulnerable to a moral critique that it does not, and,
some would say that it can never, achieve social justice. The Caux Round Table believes
that, while private business can improve standards of living through the creation of
wealth, business only responds to opportunities for profitable exchange. The investment
of capital waits upon favorable conditions; such investment is reactive and selective,
always searching for well-founded expectations of return as well as for security that those
expectations will come to fruition.
It is the work of others, not primarily that of business, to create the fundamental
conditions under which capital can be invested. Bluntly, it is in the first place the task of
responsible government to provide for sustained wealth-creation. Business can be called
upon to invest responsibly within the framework of the Caux Round Table’s Principles
for Business once governments erect and sustain the requisite infrastructure of laws,
regulations, and physical improvements to transportation and communication.
Bad government is a short cut to endemic poverty.
Therefore, the Caux Round Table offers the following Principles for Government in the
expectation that better government around the world will attract greater investment of
private capital to create more wealth for poor people.
Just as the Principles for Business, these Principles for Government derive from two
ethical ideals: “Kyosei” and “Human Dignity”. The Japanese concept of “Kyosei” looks
to living and working together for the common good while the moral vision of “Human
Dignity” refers to the sacredness or value of each person as an end, not simply as a means
to the fulfillment of others’ purposes or even of majority demands.
GENERAL PRINCIPLES
1. Public power is held in trust for the community
Power brings responsibility; power is a necessary moral circumstance in that it binds
the actions of one to the welfare of others.
Therefore, the power given by public office is held in trust for the benefit of the
community and its citizens. Officials are custodians only of the powers they hold;
they have no personal entitlement to office or the prerogatives thereof.
Holders of public office are accountable for their conduct while in office; they are
subject to removal for malfeasance, misfeasance or abuse of office. The burden of
proof that no malfeasance, misfeasance or abuse of office has occurred lies with the
office holder.
The state is the servant and agent of higher ends; it is subordinate to society. Public
power is to be exercised within a framework of moral responsibility for the welfare of
others. Governments that abuse their trust shall lose their authority and may be
removed from office.
2. Discourse should guide application of public power.
Public power, however allocated by constitutions, referendums or laws, shall rest its
legitimacy in communicative action and discourse among autonomous moral agents
who constitute the community to be served by the government. Free and open
discourse, embracing independent media, shall not be curtailed except to protect
legitimate expectations of personal privacy, sustain the confidentiality needed for the
proper separation of powers, or for the most dire of reasons relating to national
security.
1. The Civic Order must not forget its duties to citizens.
Public power constitutes a civic order for the safety and common good of its
members. The civic order, as a moral order, protects and promotes the integrity,
dignity, and self-respect of its members in their capacity as citizens and, therefore,
avoid all measures, oppressive and other, whose tendency is to transform the citizen
into a subject. The state shall protect, give legitimacy to, or restore all those principles
and institutions which sustain the moral integrity, self-respect, and civic identity of
the individual citizen, and which serve to inhibit the processes of civic estrangement,
dissolution of the civic bond, and civic disaggregation. This protects the citizen’s
capacity to contribute to the well-being of the civic order itself.
4. Corruption may not be condoned.
Public office is not to be used for personal advantage, financial gain or as a
prerogative manipulated by arbitrary personal desire. Corruption – financial, political
and moral – is inconsistent with stewardship of public interests. Only the Rule of Law
is consistent with a principled approach to use of public power.
5. Security of persons, individual liberty and ownership of property are the
foundation for individual justice.
The civic order, through its instrumentalities, shall provide for the security of life,
liberty and property for its citizens in order to insure domestic tranquility.
The civic order shall defend its sovereign integrity, its territory, and its capacity to
pursue its own ends to the maximum degree of its own choice and discretion, within
the framework of international law and principles of natural justice.
6. Justice shall be provided.
The civic order and its instrumentalities shall be impartial among citizens without
regard to condition, origin, sex or other fundamental, inherent attributes. Yet the civic
order shall distinguish among citizens according to merit and desert where rights,
benefits or privileges are best allocated according to effort and achievement, rather
than as birth-rights.
The civic order shall provide speedy, impartial and fair redress of grievances against
the state, its instruments, other citizens and aliens.
The Rule of Law shall be honored and sustained, supported by honest and impartial
tribunals and legislative checks and balances.
7. General welfare contemplates improving the well-being of individual citizens.
The state shall nurture and support all those social institutions, most conducive to the
free self-development and self-regard of the individual citizen. Public authority shall
seek to avoid, or to ameliorate, conditions of life and work which deprive the
individual citizen of dignity and self-regard or which permit to powerful citizens the
exercise of dutiless opportunities of exploitation of the weak.
The state has a custodial responsibility to manage and conserve the material and other
resources that sustain the present and future well-being of the community.
8. Transparency of government ensures accountability.
The civic order shall not act with excessive secrecy or provide its citizens with
inadequate information as to the acts and intentions of the civic order and its
instruments, which secrecy or withholding of information would prevent its citizens
from acting the citizen’s part in the discourse providing the civic order with its
authoritative legitimacy.
9. Global cooperation advances national welfare.
Governments should establish both domestic and international conditions under
which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of
international law can be maintained; live together in peace as good neighbors; and
employ international machinery and systems for the promotion of economic and
social advancement.
For more information, please contact:
Stephen B. Young
Global Executive Director, Caux Round Table
Phone: 651-265-2761
Fax: 651-223-5119
E-mail:
CauxRT@aol.com
