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Public Ethics; Administrative Ethics; Moral Philosophy

Introduction and General Overview

This article addresses ethics in a democratic republic. It does not attempt a consideration of this topic in nondemocratic regimes, nor does it explore the topic of public ethics, except incidentally, outside of the United States, though comparative political ethics is a productive and important field. This essay also addresses the ethics of nonelected pubic officials, not elected officials, although, once again, the concerns are not entirely separable. Scholarship and issues surrounding the ethics of elected officials would require a separate essay.

The term “ethics” and the phrase “moral philosophy” are, for the most part, used interchangeably, although “moral philosophy” is the more traditional phrase and “ethics” seems to be the term of choice in contemporary discourse. “Moral philosophy” as a college/university course was taught as the inception of the American college, sometimes by...

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Edmondson, H.T. (2016). Ethics and Politics. In: Farazmand, A. (eds) Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31816-5_2359-1

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