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State and Local Policies
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Research a current issue of state and local policies as it pertains to morality, ethics and lawmaking.
Write a 1,400- to 1,750-word paper in which you discuss the following:
• Describe the issue as it is faced by both state and local policymakers, including the influence of lobbyists and public interest groups.
• Explain how the issue is currently being addressed in different states across the country.
• Identify and explain the moral and ethical arguments on both sides of the issue in an unbiased manner, as well as safety concerns expressed by law enforcement and child protective services.
• Discuss how public sector morals and ethics vary among demographics locally, statewide, and across the country.
Propose a solution to this issue that you in the role of policymaker would be willing to defend publicly and explain your decision-making process.
Format your presentation consistent with APA guidelines.
Click the Assignment Files tab to submit your assignment.
Week6
Public Sector Ethics
Objectives/Competencies
o 6.1 Explain the importance of ethics in the public sector.
o 6.2 Describe how public sector morals and ethics may vary.
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Week Six Listen to Me First
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Public Administration and Public Affairs, Ch. 13
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Legislating Morality: There Oughta Be a Law!
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Week Six Electronic Reserve Readings
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Ethics and Public Policy Summary
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State and Local Policies
READINGS FOR WEEK 6
CHAPTER
13
Toward a Bureaucratic Ethic
Public administration has been, in comparison with other professions, slow to recognize its own ethical practices. Prior to the abandonment of the politics/administration dichotomy and the principles of administration (recall Chapter 2), a public administrator needed morality no more than a hotel clerk carrying out his or her daily duties.
CODES AND COMMISSIONS: THE RISE OF PUBLIC SECTOR ETHICS
This perspective began to change in the United States in the early twentieth century.
Ethics for the Public Professions
What is now the International City/County Management Association adopted the first code of ethics for a public profession in 1924. The code reflected the anticorruption values of the municipal reform movement of the period, and essentially held up efficiency as its ethical touchstone. Despite its initial narrowness, the city managers’ code was groundbreaking and other public professions followed suit. All the associations that represent the profession’s major specializations now have codes of, and provide training in, ethics for their members.
That critical component of professionalism, the universities, also have recognized the importance of public ethics. The field’s national accrediting body requires graduate education in ethics, and all introductory public administration textbooks include a discussion of ethics.1
Ethics for Governments
Governments lagged behind the public professions in recognizing ethics, but by the mid-twentieth century they were catching up. Today, more government workers (47 percent) than either nonprofit employees (44 percent) or businesspeople (38 percent) report that their organization has a full ethics and compliance program in place.2
Federal Ethics Congress first imposed a general code of ethics on federal administrators in 1958, and, twenty years later, with the passage of the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, expanded the code and founded the Office of Government Ethics.
Federal ethics regulations focus mostly on conflicts of financial interest and impartiality, consume about forty pages, and command the attention of nearly 9,000 federal employees who work, at least sometimes, in ethics programs.3 “Congress has enacted laws and presidents have issued executive orders that have produced a deeply layered and extraordinarily cumbersome regulatory scheme designed to insure the integrity of federal employees,” and clarity, simplicity, and straightforwardness suffer.4
Grass-Roots’ Ethics The first general code of state ethics was legislated in 1954 by the New York general assembly, and now forty-seven states have some form of written ethics code. Most are characterized by some serious omissions, and, in more than half the states, codes do not address even as many as four out of six basic areas of ethics legislation; to wit: the presence of an ethics code (pretty basic, that); mandatory financial disclosure; and limits on honoraria, gifts from lobbyists, post-government employment, and representation of clients before state agencies.5
Thirty-six states have established commissions to oversee ethics issues.6 Most are largely toothless, vulnerable, reactive, fragmented, symbolic, and underfunded. Perhaps not even 10 percent of all financial disclosure forms submitted by public officials receive a “substantive review” due to a lack of funds.7
Local elected officials in twenty states, a growing number, are subject to state-imposed ethics codes.8 Almost seven out of ten cities have codes of ethics, and a third of all cities regularly review their employees’ ethical conduct.9
PRACTICING ETHICAL PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
Practicing public ethics has its own unique challenges.
The Ethical Environment of the Public Administrator
It is unarguably heartening to learn that 56 percent of federal employees think that “my organization’s leaders maintain high standards of honesty and integrity,” and 62 percent feel that they can “disclose a suspected violation of law, rule or regulation without fear of reprisal”; both percentages are rising over time.10 It is even more encouraging to learn that 100 percent of high-level municipal officials report that their managers “demonstrate” ethical conduct.11
Despite these gratifying findings, however, public administrators toil on slippery ethical slopes. For nearly two decades, virtually all public administrators in federal, state, and local governments have agreed that they “encounter ethical dilemmas at work.”12
Fourteen percent of civil servants at all governmental levels feel that they are pressured to compromise ethical standards in the course of their jobs (markedly more public administrators say this than either nonprofit employees, at 11 percent,13 and businesspeople, at 10 percent14), and this percentage is an increase of two-fifths from four years earlier.15
Committing to a Higher Standard
Public administrators are committed to ethics. More than three-quarters of federal, state, and local managers believe that “ethical concerns can be empowering in organizations” (only 7 percent disagree), up from two-thirds a decade earlier.16 City managers display a solid knowledge of their profession’s code of ethics,17 and, happily, the number of city managers with higher ethics (“about one-third,” who also possess higher levels of education and professionalism) is twice that of managers who have lower levels (17 percent).18
A Higher Ethical Standard Public administrators see themselves as adhering to a higher ethical standard than their corporate compatriots, and nearly nine out of every ten consistently spurn the notion that “government morality in America is lower than business morality.”19 Public administrators appear to hold themselves to a higher ethical standard than do even the taxpayers who pay their salaries, and register even greater umbrage over governmental scandals than does the general public.20
Walking the Ethical Walk More than half of all public employees, almost exactly the same proportion as in the nonprofit and private sectors, state that they have observed “misconduct,” ranging from “Internet abuse” to theft, in their workplaces during the previous year. What is important in this context is that government workers are much more likely to report such misconduct to appropriate authorities than are their nonprofit and business counterparts, and their willingness to do so is steadily growing. Seventy percent, up from 60 percent seven years earlier, of public employees alert a responsible party of misconduct, compared with 62 percent of independent-sector workers and just 42 percent of private-sector employees.21
Public administrators are not only talking the ethical talk, but also are walking the ethical walk.
DO MORALS MATTER?
Do ethics matter? Are governments and public administrators more effective because they are ethical?
Ethics and the Effective Government
Among governments, a low “ethical climate” associates with greater damage and injury to citizens and businesses, and more complaints from the public. By contrast, a high ethical climate (i.e., managers who set a good ethical example, and communicate and enforce high ethical standards) correlates with fewer employees who take sick leave and take less of it, and workers who are more likely to think that their departments provide customers with better value for their money and who plan to keep working in those departments.22
Top public executives who have a deep sense of ethics administer governments that have fewer lawsuits, better bond ratings, and are more likely to implement state-of-the-art productivity improvements than those governments that are managed by administrators whose ethical senses are less ingrained and who, as a result, “pursue innovation but disregard accountability and responsiveness.”23
Ethics and the Effective Public Administrator
As these studies suggest, solid ethics and successful careers waltz gracefully together. An experiment in “getting one’s way in policy debates” among public administrators found that, while some shrewd tactics help, the most critical and effective tactic is that of honestly presenting one’s argument.24 Graduates of the top public administration programs in the United States rank “maintaining ethical standards” as the single most important “skill,” by far, for achieving success, regardless of where they are employed—governments, businesses, or nonprofit organizations.25
And ethics are indeed a skill. An empirical analysis of public administrators concludes that “the concepts of virtue and competence are, in practice, very similar…. because virtue is an integral feature of managerial competencies.”26
In short, high ethics associate with better governance and more successful public careers.
BUREAUCRACY’S BANE: DETERMINING THE PUBLIC INTEREST
Central to a bureaucratic ethic is this singular question: How do public administrators determine what is in “the public interest”? Regrettably, “little of the literature of public administration reflects on the nature of the public interest.”27
In the legislature, the public interest is defined by majority vote. In the courts, stare decisis, or judicial precedent, provides an evolutionary system of legal principles through which the public interest is fulfilled. When we approach government’s executive branch, however, we find no similarly clear-cut method of determining the public’s interest, though public administrationists have tried to both rationalize that such a method is unnecessary and to develop such a method.
Bureaucratic Accountability
The academic effort to skirt the question of how public administrators should make decisions that are in the public interest is called bureaucratic accountability, or the study of how various restraints safely hem and channel bureaucrats into making decisions that are democratic, ethical, legal, and fair. Hence, not to worry; nothing more is needed.
Internal Constraints and External Controls Just what these restraints are depends on the public-administration scholar. Some argue that internal constraints, whether founded on their professional socialization28 or stemming from their own “moral foundations,”29 inhibit public administrators from committing unethical acts. Others contend that external controls—laws,30 courts,31 publicity,32 legislative surveillance,33 bureaucratic decentralization,34 and citizen participation in bureaucratic decision making35—assure ethical behavior. Still others maintain that a combination of internal and external variables reinforce one another to the benefit of the public interest.36
What Do Public Administrators Use? How reflective this literature is of the real bureaucratic world is, at best, unclear. Some research finds that internal inhibitors are salient; those agencies in which the values of efficiency, effectiveness, quality, excellence, and teamwork are dominant associate with high ethical expectations and standards.37 Another investigation concludes the opposite, finding that public administrators rely heavily on an external control, the law itself, as their principal guide in dealing with ethical issues; internal constraints—personal belief systems and professional values—run a distant second.38
A Missed Point The bureaucratic-accountability writers have usefully listed attitudes and mechanisms that may prevent, correct, or punish public administrators for making decisions that are not in the public interest. But they have not recommended any systematic and proactive practice (and certainly none with the elegant simplicity and practical utility of majority vote and judicial precedent) that bureaucrats actually could use to make such decisions. Moreover, as the scant empirical evidence on the topic suggests, there is no systematic practice.
Organizational Humanism
In contrast to the students of bureaucratic accountability, another band of public administrationists does posit a systemic ethical framework for bureaucratic decision making. These are the organizational humanists.
The Ultimate Bureaucratic Value Organizational humanism is a philosophy of public ethics that is founded on the precept that personal dignity is “the ultimate value,” and it defines in operational terms precisely what the public interest is. The public interest is to always treat each person humanely.39
Organizational humanism, in its more candid mode, “forwards the proposition that the ends of man are the ends of man…. it is not willing to compromise its human values on any grounds…. [and] calls for the ultimate capitulation of operational mechanics and political strategies to a concept of the public interest based on man as the most important concern of bureaucratic power.”40
The organizational humanists are attractive because they make no bones about what they think is important. Its problem lies in its application. Devils always lurk in the details.
Applying Organizational Humanism: A Non-Starter Consider, for example, how organizational humanism would treat affirmative action. There are two, value-based positions in this controversy.
One is that government should make special efforts, including the reduction of entrance and promotion standards, to hire and advance members of those segments of society that have endured unfair discrimination through no fault of their own.
The other position is that no “lowering of standards” should be considered, regardless of the applicant’s past tribulations, because government owes the best governance possible to all the governed, deprived groups included.
Would organizational humanism be for or against affirmative action? Who knows?
Organizational humanism states only that “the ultimate value” in bureaucratic decision making is “the ends of man.” Is humanity best served by hiring or promoting a deprived-group member who does not execute his or her duties satisfactorily, or is it best served by not hiring or by holding back that same person? This dilemma can be rendered even more exquisite when the incompetent, or even just less competent, deprived-group member applies to an agency charged with ending discrimination against deprived groups.
It is reasonably apparent that organizational humanism does not offer much of a guide to the public administrator in formulating a decision that is in the public interest.
CAN NORMATIVE THEORY HELP? FOUR PHILOSOPHIES OF THE PUBLIC INTEREST
So the essential problem still remains: The public administrator needs a simple and operational articulation of the public interest that permits him or her to make a decision, based on rational thinking, that is in the public interest.
Should we move beyond the confines of the scholarly community of public administration in addressing this issue? Can the world’s great philosophers help?
There are four philosophies of the public interest that are relevant to bureaucratic decision making.
Intuitionism: Morally Muddling Through
One such philosophy is intuitionism, advocated by Aristotle, among others. Intuitionism expounds a plurality of first principles, all of them, no doubt, admirable. As a practical matter, however, these principles can conflict with one another when applied to specific situations, and intuitionism offers no particular method (other than one’s intuition), much less a rational and systemic one, for choosing which principle should take precedence.
Intuitionism amounts to morally muddling through.
Would intuitionism help us in resolving our dilemma of affirmative action? As with organizational humanism, who knows?
Perfectionism: Promoting Perfect People
Another germane philosophy is perfectionism, which, in contrast to intuitionism, has no problem of ambiguity. Perfectionism contends that the sole principle in determining the public interest should be the promotion of excellence in art, science, and culture. Any misfortune for society’s less fortunate, and less talented, segments that results is morally justified because the entire society is lifted that much nearer to perfection.
Friedrich Nietzsche is exemplary of a perfectionist perspective. As Nietzsche put it so pithily, the deepest meaning that can be given to the human experience is “your living for the rarest and most valuable specimens,”41 and Nietzsche evidently included himself among those specimens.
Unsurprisingly, perfectionism’s opinion of affirmative action is clear: To hell with it.
Utilitarianism: The Most Benefits for the Most People
A third ethical framework for the determination of the public interest is utilitarianism, represented by John Stuart Mill, among others.
Utilitarianism differs from intuitionism in that it is systematic in logic, and from perfectionism in that it is democratic in values. Utilitarianism holds that, if a public policy makes most people better off, even if some people are left worse off, then the public interest is served.
An example of a utilitarian policy would be one that raised everyone’s taxes and sent the new revenues that they generated to physicians. Such a policy would make everyone healthier (i.e., better off) by encouraging more people to enter the medical profession. Even though society’s least well-off taxpayers would lose money under this arrangement, the policy nonetheless would be ethical and in the public interest because everyone’s net balance of health would be enhanced, including that of the least well off.
Utilitarians would reject affirmative action as a policy reflective of the public interest because it does not, in theory, make everyone better off. Under utilitarianism’s economic criteria, affirmative action makes only certain groups better off.
Fairness: A Theory of Justice
Utilitarianism has much going for it, but there remains the gnawing issue of what to do about the bottom of society, a stratum that utilitarian policies slap in the chops.
In 1945, Karl Popper suggested that “Instead of the greatest happiness for the greatest number [as the utilitarians advocate], one should demand, more modestly, the least amount of avoidable suffering for all; and further, that unavoidable suffering … should be distributed as equally as possible.”42
A generation later, John Rawls extended Popper’s ideas, contending that the public interest can be discerned in most situations by applying two “principles of justice”: (1) that “each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others,” and (2) that “social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) reasonably expected to be to everyone’s advantage, and (b) attached to positions and offices open to all.”43 Should these principles come into conflict, the second is expected to yield to the first; thus, just as in organizational humanism, the dignity of the individual person is of paramount importance.
Rawls’s theory of justice goes further, however. His principles necessarily lead to the conclusion that inequalities of wealth, authority, and social opportunity “are just only if they result in compensating benefits for everyone, and in particular for the least advantaged members of society. These principles rule out justifying institutions on the grounds that the hardships of some are offset by a greater good in the aggregate. It may be expedient but it is not just that some should have less in order that others may prosper.”44
In short, as Rawls observes, his principles in essence are a rigorous statement of the traditional Anglo-Saxon concept of fairness.
Applying Fairness: A Real Starter How would Rawls’s and Popper’s theories deal with affirmative action? They would, by the inevitability of their logic, argue for it on these grounds:
■ Not hiring and promoting society’s least well off would be further depriving society’s most deprived groups.
■ Hiring and promoting them would facilitate the full realization of their “basic liberty” (or personal dignity) without encroaching on the basic liberty of others.
■ Hiring and promoting them helps assure that all positions and offices are open to all.
■ Hiring and promoting them helps assure that privileges innate to such offices continue to work toward the advantage of all in a reasonably equal way, because the privileges and positions are being extended to the less well off in society.
The Unique Utility of Fairness as the Public Interest When applied with the rigor brought by Rawls and Popper, fairness offers the public administrator a workable, rational way for determining the public interest. So, for that matter, do perfectionism and utilitarianism (but not organizational humanism and intuitionism, which have severe problems of workability or logic). We think that perfectionism and utilitarianism are not appropriate for American public administrators, however, because the former’s values are incompatible with the dominant values of American society, and the latter’s logic permits the least advantaged people in society to be disadvantaged further.
Does Philosophy Matter?
We have reviewed four philosophies of the public interest. So what? Does the ivory tower matter in the corridors of power?
We remind those who might sneer, No, in answering this question that to be both cynical and unworldly is a particularly unattractive combination. Philosophy does, in fact, affect bureaucratic decision making and public policy, and it does so in deep and meaningful ways.
Aristotle’s intuitionism pervades the public sector. Its popularity, however, is not due to its intellectual force. Rather, intuitionism is singularly easy to choose as a theory of the public interest, in part because most public administrators are unaware that they are choosing it. Most public administrators, like most of us, make decisions on the basis of what seems to be the most nearly right at the time. This, in essence, is what intuitionism is all about.
Nietzsche’s perfectionism has been consciously selected by the National Science Foundation as its operating philosophy of the public interest. The Foundation’s mission of financing “pure” scientific research—that science should be funded for the sake of science—is a clear expression of the perfectionist principle.
Utilitarianism is the official, if unacknowledged, premise on which policy choices are made by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and likely by many other agencies, too. The Corps has adopted “benefit/cost analysis” as its method of deciding which engineering projects are in the best interests of the nation, and benefits and costs are cast in terms of dollars saved or lost. Hence, proposed projects, such as flood control, that protect trailer parks and poor people, rather than McMansions and rich people, would not make the cut because manors are worth more than mobile homes. To protect cheaper homes at the expense of costlier ones would violate benefit/cost precepts—and utilitarian precepts as well.45
Rawls’s and Popper’s theory of justice is widely implemented; it furnishes the philosophic foundation for the vast majority of American governments that levy a progressive tax on personal income, and no government imposes a regressive income tax, whether personal or corporate. Mainstream personal income tax codes are purposely designed to assure that the least well off are not made less well off, a principle that is central to Rawls’s and Popper’s theory.
Even in the recesses of governmental bureaucracies, philosophy flourishes.
The Passion of Public Administration
Although, as we observed at the beginning of this book, constraint is the dominating characteristic in the culture immersing America’s public administrators, they nonetheless make large—sometimes very large —decisions. Consider the case, and the ethics, of New York’s Robert Moses, who transitioned from dreamy idealist to one of the preeminent power brokers of the twentieth century.
Robert Moses is sometimes called “America’s greatest builder,” and the term is not hyperbolic. He confided to friends his grand plans to transmogrify New York as early as 1914, while still in his twenties, and began his career as a “Goo-Goo,” that dismissive term used by Tammany Hall politicians to describe “good government” reformers.
Throughout his entire career (1924–1968), Moses never held an elected office. Instead, he secured appointments to head numerous public authorities, basking in such modestly-titled positions as “Coordinator,” or as an authority’s board member —but often its only member. At his peak, Moses headed fourteen state and city authorities at once. Moses added to the city 416 miles of parkways; 15,000 acres through his shoreline projects; and over a thousand apartment buildings housing more people than lived in Minneapolis.
In the state, Moses built all but one of its major expressways; seven of the nine bridges linking Manhattan with the mainland; a number of huge power dams; and parks. By the time Moses had finished, New York owned 45 percent of all the nation’s acreage devoted to state parks.
Nationally, Moses was instrumental in drafting the life-changing Interstate Highway Act and the controversial Urban Renewal program. His interest in Urban Renewal was understandable: Moses, who controlled all such projects in New York, spent more than twice the amount of federal Urban Renewal dollars than did all other cities combined.
As the urban scholar, Lewis Mumford, one of Moses’s most tenacious foes, stated, “In the twentieth century, the influence of Robert Moses on the cities of America was greater than that of any other person” (Caro, The Power Broker, p. 12).
Was Moses good or bad for New York—and the nation?
To his everlasting credit, Moses rammed through titanic projects that employed thousands, moved hundreds of thousands, and created greenswards enjoyed by millions. And “rammed” is the apt verb. Moses manifested a “savage energy” that would erupt into a “fury” when his plans were frustrated. He “would lunge out of his chair and begin, as one aide put it, ‘waving his arms, just wild,’ pick up the old-fashioned inkwell on his desk and hurl it at aides so that it shattered against a wall; how he would pound his clenched fists into the walls hard enough to scrape the skin off them, in a rage beyond the perception of pain” (Caro, “The City Shaper,” pp. 48–49).
There was, however, a dark side to his genius. To build, Moses destroyed. His projects, which, with few exceptions, were built for the middle class and the wealthy, required razing the homes of a half-million people, most of them poor. Asked if he had ever considered altering his projects to save their homes, Moses retorted, “‘Nah’ … I can still hear the scorn in his voice as he said it … scorn for me who had thought it necessary to ask about them” (Caro, “The City Shaper,” p. 52).
Moses routinely employed deception, slander, libel, blackmail, and thinly-veiled bribery to achieve his goals, tactics that resulted in “some of the greatest scandals of twentieth century New York, scandals almost incredible … for the colossal scale of their corruption.” Moses boasted (jokingly, one hopes) that “nothing I have ever done has been tinged with legality” (Caro, “The City Shaper,” p. 42). Though personally “money honest” (to employ a term for a complex reality that only New Yorkers could express so succinctly), his “Moses men,” his closest allies and administrators, became multimillionaires.
Being money honest, however, did not mean that this particular bureaucrat subsisted in a low-profile life of genteel modesty. Indeed, Moses’s positions came with a multitude of expensive and enviable perks, including a yacht, skippered by three captains, for his personal use, and four dining rooms scattered around the city, each with its own full-time staff, who served only Moses and his guests. The secretaries who worked in his authorities were not only paid more than New York City’s commissioners, but also were given bigger cars, driven by chauffeurs who were on call twenty-four/seven.
Through some adroit, if ethically questionable, maneuvering by New York’s governor, Moses lost all his power in 1968. But Moses never gave up. As a labor leader put it, “They want him to get tired and to go away and get lost. But I say, ‘Forget it!’ This guy don’t blow away” (Caro, “The City Shaper,” p. 53).
Robert Moses died in 1981. He was ninety-two, still a fighter. ■
Sources: Robert A. Cairo, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (New York: Knopf, 1974) and Robert A. Cairo, “The City Shaper,” The New Yorker (January 5, 1998), pp. 42–53.
WHAT IS TO BE DONE? IMPLEMENTING ETHICAL ADMINISTRATION
In 1902, the Russian Communist V. I. Lenin demanded, “What is to be done?” about the plight of the proletariat, and promptly answered his own question with this word: Revolution!
Something akin to a revolution may be needed to cope with government’s most egregious and destructive form of unethical behavior, corruption, a suppurating public pustule that inspired the founding of public administration itself. Perhaps it is time to return to our roots.
Only in Washington
An irony in the endless American effort to curtail corruption is that its locus seems to have shifted over the course of the twentieth century from state and local governments to the federal one. The nearly universal professionalizing of state civil services and the dominance of the council-manager plan in local governments clearly correlate with declining corruption in these jurisdictions. Washington, however, appears to be awash in conflicts of interest and special-interest influence.
A glaringly shameful example is the moral corrosion of federal governance caused by Washington’s revolving door (reviewed in Chapter 11), a door that is virtually nonexistent in state and local governments.
Fewer than 15 percent of state agency heads,46 or just a fourth of the comparable percentage for their closest federal counterparts,47 are hired directly from corporations. Nor do they quickly skedaddle back to the private sector. State agency directors have a median tenure of six years and rising in their present positions,48 or twice the average tenure of federal agency heads who are careerists,49 and four times longer than that of federal political appointees.50
In local governments, even these faint connections are utterly absent. All city and county chief administrative officers are hired either from within their own government (21 percent) or from another local government (79 percent),51 and they have spent an average of nearly seven years in their current positions.52
If Congress is serious about cleaning up Washington’s bureaucracy—and itself—then it must address the federal revolving door in terms far stiffer than it has. We hear, with increasing frequency, disturbing anecdotes about administrators who have joined the federal service solely to boost their prospects for more lucrative careers as lobbyists.
Trust, Esteem, and Pay
We are not suggesting that all state and local governments are angelic; far too many have yet to ascend to purgatory. But the grassroots governments do seem to have cultivated, more successfully than their federal cousin, two qualities that are vital to ethical—and effective—governing. They are public trust in government, and popular esteem for those who govern.
We discussed in Chapter 1 how both factors correlate with superior governing. Regrettably, deepening the public’s trust is a tough challenge in a culture that, perhaps more than any other, constrains its governments’ role in society.
Nevertheless, it is a challenge that can be met, and a straightforward way of doing so, at least to some extent, would be to pay public administrators more competitively, as higher salaries associate not only with higher social status, but also with better governing.
State and local governments seem to understand these correlations better than Washington. As we noted in Chapter 9, the salaries of state and local administrators often surpass those of their federal counterparts, and, as we explained in Chapter 12, Americans also hold their state and local governments in higher esteem than the federal one.
Research shows that greater pay reduces corruptive temptations, particularly among those public administrators who are at the forefront of protecting the public interest from the predations of private interests.53 This problem is especially acute in the federal government, where regulation and privatization—two huge and sprawling areas that are uniquely susceptible to graft—expanded radically during the twentieth century and into this one. Regulators, contract officers, and other public administrators whose positions render them vulnerable to being compromised, should have their pay raised to levels that are more competitive with their corporate counterparts. The costs would be relatively trivial (their salaries need not be in lockstep with the private sector), and the benefits would be unambiguously immense.
The city-state of Singapore exemplifies the public benefits brought by competitive public salaries. Its government’s ministers (i.e., cabinet-level executives) are paid more than $1 million, with comparably competitive salaries down the line. With just 5 million people, Singapore has impressively vast financial reserves of about $250 billion54 (a starkly solid sign of good governance), and boasts “one of the world’s least corrupt and most efficient bureaucracies.”55
The challenge of raising public pay equals that of raising the public’s trust of government and its respect for those who work in it: Only 13 percent of the citizenry think that the salaries of public administrators should be raised “to encourage the best people to go into government.”56 Yet, for the sake of that very citizenry, both challenges must be faced.
BIG BUREAUCRACY, BIG DECISIONS
It is fitting to close this book with a thought about the ultimate duty of the public administrator. That duty is to make ethical decisions. Public administrators’ decisions can be immensely far-reaching, or affect just one person. But each of them changes people, for good or ill.
We request that, if you enter the field, you remember to ask yourself how people will be helped or hurt by your decisions. Few questions are more important in any context, but in the context of the public life of your nation, none is more important.
NOTES
1. James S. Bowman, Evan M. Berman, and Jonathan P. West, “The Profession of Public Administration: An Ethics Edge in Introductory Textbooks?” Public Administration Review 61 (March/April 2001), pp. 194–205.
2. Ethics Resource Center, National Nonprofit Ethics Survey: An Inside View of Nonprofit Sector Ethics (Arlington, VA: Author, 2008), pp. 2, 22. Figures are for 2007.
3. Robert W. Smith, “Corporate Ethics Officers and Government Ethics Administrators: Comparing Apples with Oranges or a Lesson to Be Learned?” Administration & Society 34 (January 2003), pp. 632–652. The quotation is on p. 639. Figure is for 1998.
4. National Commission on the Public Service, Urgent Business for America: Revitalizing the Federal Government for the 21st Century (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2003), pp. 21–22.
5. Beth A. Rosenson, Shadowlands of Conduct: Ethics and State Politics (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2005), pp. 5, 10–11. Data are for 1996.
6. Fran Burke and George C. S. Benson, “State Ethics Codes, Commissions, and Conflicts,” State Government Review 10 (May 1989), pp. 195–198.
7. Robert W. Smith, “Enforcement or Ethical Capacity: Considering the Role of State Ethics Commissions at the Millennium,” Public Administration Review 63 (May/June 2003), pp. 283–295. The quotations are on pp. 283 and 292. This is a study of sixty “ethics officials and stakeholders” in Connecticut, Florida, and New York.
8. U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, State Laws Governing Local Government Structure and Administration, M-186 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1993), p. 33. Figure is for 1990. In 1978, seventeen states imposed ethics codes.
9. Mary Ann Feldheim and Xiaohu Wang, “Ethics and Public Trust: Results from a National Survey,” Public Integrity 6 (Winter 2003–2004), pp. 63–75. Figures are for 2000.
10. U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, 2010 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2009), p. 39.
11. Feldheim and Wang, “Ethics and Public Trust,” p. 70. Figures are for 2000.
12. James S. Bowman and Claire Connolly Knox, “Ethics in Government: No Matter How Long and Dark the Night,” Public Administration Review 68 (July/August 2008), pp. 627–639. The quotation is on p. 628. Ninety-seven percent said this in 1989, 1996, and 2006.
13. Ethics Resource Center, National Nonprofit Ethics Survey, p. 16. Figure is for 2007.
14. Ethics Resource Center, National Business Ethics Survey: An Inside View of Private Sector Ethics (Arlington, VA: Author, 2008), p. 16. Figure is for 2007.
15. Ethics Resource Center, National Government Ethics Survey: An Inside View of Public Sector Ethics (Arlington, VA: Author, 2008), p. 6. Figure is for 2007. In 2003, 10 percent of government workers said this.
16. Bowman and Knox, “Ethics in Government,” p. 628. Figures are for 2006 and 1996.
17. Greg Streib and Mark Rivera, “Assessing the Ethical Knowledge of City Managers,” Public Integrity 12 (Winter 2009/2010), pp. 9–23.
18. Evan M. Berman and Jonathan P. West, “Responsible Risk-Taking,” Public Administration Review 58 (July/August 1998), pp. 346–352.
19. Bowman and Knox, “Ethics in Government,” p. 629. From 85 to 88 percent said this in 1989, 1996, and 2006.
20. James S. Bowman, “Ethics in Government: A National Survey of Public Administrators,” Public Administration Review 50 (May/June 1990), pp. 345–353.
21. Ethics Resource Center, National Nonprofit Ethics Survey, pp. 3–4; National Government Ethics Survey, pp. 7, 19, 20, 25, 31, 32; and National Business Ethics Survey, p. 3. Figures are for 2007.
22. Colleen G. Waring and C’Anne Daugherty, “Auditing Ethics—Make Them an Offer They Can’t Refuse,” Journal of Government Financial Management 53 (Spring 2004), pp. 34–40.
23. Berman and West, “Responsible Risk-Taking,” p. 349.
24. Jason L. Jenson, “Getting One’s Way in Policy Debates: Influence Tactics Used in Group Decision-Making Settings,” Public Administration Review 67 (March/April 2007), pp. 216–227.
25. Paul C. Light, The New Public Service (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1999), p. 110
26. Michael Macaulay and Alan Lawton, “From Virtue to Competence: Changing the Principles of Public Service,” Fublic Administration Review 66 (September/October 2006), pp. 702–710. The quotations are on pp. 701, 709.
27. Eugene D. Dvorin and Robert H. Simmons, From Amoral to Humane Bureaucracy (San Francisco, CA: Canfield Press, 1972), p. 61.
28. Carl J. Friedrich and Taylor Cole, Responsible Bureaucracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949).
29. Kathryn Denhardt, “Unearthing the Moral Foundations of Public Administration: Honor, Benevolence, and Justice,” Ethical Frontiers in Public Management, pp. 256–283.
30. John A. Rohr, Ethics for Bureaucrats: An Essay on Faw and Values, 2nd ed. (New York: Marcel Dekker, 1989).
31. K. C. Davis, Administrative Faw (St. Paul, MN: West Publishing, 1951).
32. Gordon Tullock, The Politics of Bureaucracy (Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press, 1965).
33. Charles S. Hyneman, Bureaucracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1950).
34. Dwight Waldo, “Development of a Theory of Democratic Administration,” American Political Science Review 46 (March 1952), pp. 81–103.
35. Ludwig Von Mises, Bureaucracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1944).
36. Terry L. Cooper, The Responsible Administrator (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1990).
37. Donald C. Menzel, “The Ethical Environment of Local Government Managers,” American Review of Public Administration 25 (September 1995), pp. 247–261.
38. Harold F. Gortner, Ethics for Public Managers (New York: Praeger, 1991).
39. Dvorin and Simmons, From Amoral to Humane Bureaucracy, p. 61.
40. Ibid., pp. 60–61. The authors are explaining what they call “radical humanism,” which appears to be a more plainly-spoken version of organizational humanism.
41. Friedrich Nietzsche, as quoted in J. R. Hollingsdale, Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1965), p. 127.
42. Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies: Vol. I, The Spell of Plato, 5th ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966), p. 285. The set first was published in 1945.
43. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 60.
44. Ibid., pp. 14–15.
45. Laura Mumford, “Policy Analysis and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.” Paper submitted to a graduate course in public administration, December 11, 1984, School of Public Affairs, College of Public Programs, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, Nicholas Henry, instructor.
46. Jeffrey L. Brudney, Cynthia J. Bowling, and Deil S. Wright, Continuity and Change in Public Administration Across the 50 States: Finking Practice, Theory, and Research through the American State Administrators Project, 1964–2008 (Auburn, AL: Center for Governmental Services, Auburn University, 2010), pp. 13–14. This is an analysis of some 1,000 state agency directors. Private-sector figure is for 1994–2008; “fewer than 15 percent” is for the 2000s.
47. As derived from data in U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, In Search of Highly Skilled Workers: A Study on the Hiring of Upper Fevel Employees from Outside the Federal Government (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2008), p. 13. Chapter 11 has details.
48. Brudney, Bowling, and Wright, Continuity and Change in Public Administration Across the 50 States, p. 13.
49. David E. Lewis, Political Appointments, Bureau Chiefs, and Federal Management Performance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, 2005), p. 35. Chapter 9 has details.
50. Patricia W. Ingraham, “Building Bridges or Burning Them? The President, The Appointees, and The Bureaucracy,” Public Administration Review 47 (September/October 1987), pp. 425–435. Chapter 9 has details.
51. Victor S. DeSantis and Charldean Newell, “Local Government Managers’ Career Paths,” Municipal Year Book, 1996 (Washington, DC: International City/County Management Association, 1996), pp. 3–10. The data are on p. 6.
52. Jerri Killian and Enamul Choudhury, “Continuity and Change in the Role of City Managers,” Municipal Year Book, 2010 (Washington, DC: International City/County Management Association, 2010), pp. 10–18. Figure, 6.8 years (p. 11), is for 2010.
53. Gary S. Becker and George J. Stigler, “Law Enforcement, Malfeasance, and Compensation of Enforcers,” Journal of Legal Studies 3 (January 1974), pp. 1–18.
54. Monetary Authority of Singapore, Official Foreign Reserves, http://www.mas.gov.sg/data_room/reserves_statistics/Official_Foreign_Reserves.html. Figure is for 2011.
55. James Surowiecki, “The Regulation Crisis,” The New Yorker (June 14 & 21, 2010), p. 56.
56. Kevin Merida, “Americans Want a Direct Say in Political Decision-Making, Pollsters Find,” Washington Post (April 17, 1994).
VIDEOS FOR THIS WEEK
MPA/503 » Learning Activity
US/Arizona Time: Sep 05, 2016, 12:41 AM
• Class Home
• Week1 Public Service and the MPA
• Week2 Local Government and Organizational Theory
• Week3 State Government and Human Capital
• Week4 Intergovernmental Relations and Public Policy
• Week5 Fiscal Sources and Public Policy Implementation
• Week6 Public Sector Ethics
• Full Syllabus
Legislating Morality: There Oughta Be a Law!
Objectives:
•
Watch the following segments from the “Legislating Morality: There Oughta Be a Law!” video.
• Laws and Morality
• Ethics and Lawmaking
• Government Chooses Moral Issues
Materials
• Laws and Morality
• Ethics and Lawmaking
• Government Chooses Moral Issues
ADDITIONAL IMPORTANT READINGS:
MPA503 Public Administration: Institutions and Processes
Week 6
Public Sector Ethics
Readings:
• Atwater, K. M. (2007). Whistleblowers enforce procurement ethics. Summit, 10(4), 4-8, 13-14.
• Beeri, I., Dayan, R., Vigoda-Gadot, E., & Werner, S. (2013). Advancing ethics in public organizations: The impact of an ethics program on employees’ perceptions and behaviors in a regional council. Journal of Business Ethics, 112(1), 59-78.
• Hawkins, T., Gravier, M, & Powley, E. (2011). Public versus private sector procurement ethics and strategy: What each sector can learn from the other. Journal of Business Ethics, 103(4), 567-586.
• McCoy, B. H. (2010). Ethics versus compliance. Real Estate Issues, 35(2), 72-73.
• Pelletier, K., & Bligh, M. (2006). Rebounding from corruption: Perceptions of ethics program effectiveness in a public sector organization. Journal of Business Ethics, 67(4), 359-374.
• Stevulak, C., & Brown, M. P. (2011). Activating public sector ethics in transitional societies. Public Integrity, 13(2), 97-112.
Searches:
• importance of ethics in the public sector and intergovernmental relations
• personal values and public sector values and vary
Publications:
• Public Sector Ethics: Finding and Implementing Values
