Border guards or smugglers? Ethics officers in the management of the public/private divide

This article explores the institutionalization of the regulation of revolving doors in the administration, through an analysis of the role of ethics officers (“référents déontologues” in french), introduced in 2016 in France. The study highlights three aspects of the role of these ethics officers: the first is to reconcile an ethical culture characteristic of a ‘deontological turn’ in the public sector with a culture of mobility characteristic of the neo-managerial reforms of the 1990s; the second is to legitimize mobility by issuing opinions on career moves to the private sector; and the third is to identify illegitimate mobility, such as the holding of a number of simultaneous positions. The study concludes that while the role of ethics officers appears to be a tool for legitimizing the porous nature of public/private boundaries, it is also a means of consolidating these boundaries in certain areas.