Administrative Ethics and Accountability

1
Administrative Ethics and Accountability

• Lecture 17 Administrative Processes in
  Government

2
The Origins and Nature of Honor

• Our modern concepts of honor have their origins
  in ancient Greece and Rome.
• Classic example Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
  458 B.C., with Rome threatened by military
  defeat, Cincinnatus, a farmer, was appointed
  dictator by the Senate to deal with the
  emergency. Abandoned his plow in midfield,
  defeated the enemy in 16 days, resigned the
  dictatorship, and returned to farming.
• George Washinton, one of the few Cincinnatus
  figures in world history.

3
The Origins and Nature of Honor

• Term limits seek to enforce legislative honor.
• Sense of honor derived from family, friends, and
  the media. Based on notions of medieval
  chivalry.
• Aristotle to medieval chivalry to aristocratic
  dueling codes to modern concept of the gentleman.
• Star Trek and Star Wars.

4
National Honor

• Once reserved for the nobility, honor has since
  the eighteenth century become increasingly
  democratized.
• As absolutist governments declined, national
  honor became a factor that influenced whole
  peoples.
• France vs. Great Britain in 1940.

5
Why Honor Precedes Ethics

• Honor comes before ethics because a person
  without honor has no moral compass and does not
  know which way to turn to be ethical.

6
Why Honor Precedes Ethics

• Honor goes to the essence of public affairs
  Since ancient times only individuals perceived to
  be honorable could be trusted with the publics
  business.
• Honor always has a context, is always influenced
  by the prevailing organizational and political
  culture.
• Melvin Belli, Errol Flynn, and the French lawsuit.

7
Dimensions of Honor

• Ex officio the honor associated with the
  office most superficial.
• The outward perception of ones reputation
  business goodwill.

8
Dimensions of Honor

• True honor begins with personal integrity and
  honesty.
• Honesty is the essence of honor.
• Those with integrity live up to their stated
  principles and their word.
• The core of administrative ethics is integrity of
  communication.
• Integrated strength or character gravitas.

9
Dimensions of Honor

• Administrators with integrity understand that
  they have a special moral obligation to the
  people they serve.
• Lacking a traditional nobility, republican
  governments give leadership roles to senior
  bureaucrats and elected officials.

10
Dimensions of Honor

• Once in office, their fellow citizens rightly
  expect them to take moral and career risks,
  parallel to the traditional risks of combat, to
  protect their fellow citizens, to protect the
  regime, to protect the constitution.
• Unfortunately, lapses of honor take place all of
  the time.

11
Corruption in Government

• Recurrent scandals and instances of official
  mischief in government pose a great threat to the
  democratic notions of the rule of law.
• By engaging in misuse of office for self-gain,
  corrupt representatives of the people illegally
  put themselves above the law.
• Moreover, a public officials wrongdoing
  undermines the argument that all people are
  created equal.

12
Corruption in Government
13
Bribery

• Corruption also undermines economic rights.
• Bribery in government contracting abridges due
  process for the bidders and compromises
  efficiency.
• However, bribery does supplement the salary of
  poorly paid public officials in some systems and
  increases access to the process.

14
Bribery

• But exposure of bribery undermines confidence in
  government and increases cynicism.
• For some, the single most important cause of
  corruption is individual greed For others, it is
  a complex combination of opportunity, risk,
  organizational culture, and individual
  susceptibility.

15
Lies Big and Little

• A big lie is an untruth so great or so audacious
  that it is bound to have an effect on public
  opinion.
• Adolph Hitler.
• Joseph McCarthy.
• Lies, Democrats, and Vietnam.

16
Lies Big and Little

• Lying for your country.
• Ambassadors.
• Patron saint of lying politicians Niccolo
  Machiavelli.
• When is it acceptable to tell a lie not for
  personal benefit but for a perceived public good?

17
Dirty Hands Dilemma

• When do desirable public ends justify the lying
  means? When is doing evil acceptable to produce
  a greater political good?
• Tension between perceived professional
  obligations and long-standing moral obligations.

18
Dirty Hands Dilemma

• Machiavelli did not see it as a dilemma at all
  professional responsibilities supercede moral
  judgments in all situations.
• Others would argue that public officials must be
  held accountable for their unethical acts even if
  those acts were done in the name of the common
  good and performed by someone claiming to be a
  professional or a mere functionary.

19
Dirty Hands Dilemma

• Most common form of the dilemma is lying (direct
  falsehoods, exaggerations, omissions, evasions,
  deceptions, duplicity, and so on.
• Do public officials have a special obligation to
  tell the truth (popular sovereignty)? Do their
  offices permit them special excuses to depart
  from truth-telling (government survival and
  public safety)?
• Competing stakeholders often create the dilemma.

20
Administrative Ethics

• Is there administrative ethics at all?
• Ethic of neutrality?
• Ethic of structure?
• Answer yes!
• Administrators have a positive duty to do no
  harm.
• Nuremberg defense is invalid.
• Following orders is no excuse.
• Soldiers and bureaucrats have a positive
  obligation to disobey illegal and immoral orders.

21
Hierarchy of Ethics

• Public administrator is frequently adrift in a
  sea of competing duties and obligations.
• Not so much stakeholder conflicts as conflicting
  responsibilities.
• Hierarchy of ethics.
• Personal morality sense of right and wrong.
• Professional ethics professional norms.
• Organizational ethics organizational culture.
• Social ethics Social obligation to protect
  individuals and further the progress of the group.

22
Hierarchy of Ethics

• Iran-Contra Affair.
• Reagan administration sold arms to Iran (to get
  Iran to negotiate release hostages in Lebanon) at
  higher than normal prices and used surplus to
  fund Contras in Iran.
• Violation to sell arms to Iran or to fund
  Contras.
• Oliver North violated organizational and social
  ethics, but justified it on the basis of personal
  morality and duty to country.
• Appeal to higher law always problematic.

23
Whistleblowing

• Whistleblowing refers to what happens when an
  employee decides that obligations to society come
  before obligations to an organization.
• A whistleblower is an individual who believes
  that the public interest overrides the interests
  of his or her organization and publicly blows the
  whistle on exposes corrupt, illegal,
  fraudulent, or harmful activity.
• Whistleblowers not well received. Squealers and
  blacklists.

24
Whistleblowing

• A. Ernest Fitzgerald (GS-17 deputy for Management
  Systems in the Office of the Assistant Secretary
  of the Air Force) testified on cost overruns on
  the C-5A military cargo plane.
• Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers.

25
Protecting Whistleblowers

• Civil Service Reform Act of 1978.
• Unlawful to retaliate against whistleblowers.
• Freedom of Information Act of 1966.
• Provides justification for whistleblowing.
• Merit Systems Protection Board.
• 34 state and federal laws.
• Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989.
• False Claims Act of 1986.

26
Codes of Honor, Conduct, and Ethics

• Code of honor that forced Alexander Hamilton to
  duel Aaron Burr in 1803 (pistols at ten paces).
  Hamilton lost, and died.
• Dueling over honor has not subsided it only
  takes new forms (cars, pistols, automatic
  weapons).

27
Honorable Behavior

• We still expect leaders to act honorably and
  disdain them when they do not.
• Titanic 1912 HMS Birkenhead 1852.
• Edward John Smith vs. J. Bruce Ismay.
• Codes of honor have their origins in ancient
  precepts about how a person should behave in the
  face of danger, when confronted with temptation
  or before authority figures.

28
Honorable Behavior

• Ten Commandments.
• As life got more complicated codes developed for
  various occupations.
• Most famous code of warriors chivalric code.
• But, class-based.
• How did aristocratic gentlemen get common people
  to behave?
• Answer common law the law was intended to have
  a deterrent effect.

29
Standards of Conduct

• Many civilian government agencies now have
  standards of conduct, formal guidelines, for
  ethical behavior.
• Their objective is to ensure that employees
  refrain from using their official positions for
  private gain.
• Standards of conduct relate to a specific
  organization Codes of ethics apply to a whole
  profession or occupational category.

30
Codes of Ethics

• American Society of Public Administration Code of
  Ethics.
• http//www.aspanet.org/scriptcontent/index_codeofe
  thics.cfm.
• International City Managers Association Code of
  Ethics.
• http//www.icma.org/main/bc.asp?bcid40hsid1ssi
  d12530ssid22531.

31
Standards of Conduct

• Standards of ethical conduct for employees of the
  executive branch
• http//www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_04/5cfr
  2635_04.html.
• Standards of conduct for the state of California
  procurement and contracting professionals.
• http//www.documents.dgs.ca.gov/pd/busmgmt/condsta
  nd.pdf.

32
Standards of Conduct

• University of California Statement of Ethical
  Values.
• http//www.ucop.edu/ucophome/coordrev/policy/Stmt_
  Stds_Ethics.pdf.
• California State University Conflict of Interest
  Handbook.
• http//www.calstate.edu/CSP/crl/ref/CRL056.pdf