The New American Way of Ethics: The Political Ethics of Constitutionally Centered Public Service

Vogelsang-Coombs, Vera

doi:10.1057/978-1-137-49400-9_12

Vera Vogelsang-Coombs²

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Abstract

The conclusion summarizes why the political ethics of public service is a better ethos to govern American society than the prevailing American way of ethics and why constitutionally centered democratic public service qualifies as a bastion of public trust. Operationalizing John Rohr’s normative administrative theory, political ethics enables career public servants to function as constitutional balance-wheels to achieve constitutional equilibrium in government. The book concludes with a proposal for a rigorous leadership program designed to acclimate career public servants to on-the-job intellectual, psychological, moral, and political challenges. Besides preserving American self-government based on universal values—equality and liberty—the political ethics of public service catalyzes ethical progress in US society while endowing Americans with a future of great political possibilities

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Notes

1.
Charles T. Goodsell, The New Case for Bureaucracy (Thousand Oaks, CA: CQ Press/Sage, 2015), 19.
2.
Norton E. Long, “Power and Administration,” Public Administration Review 9, no. 4 (July/August 1949): 263.
Vera Vogelsang-Coombs and Larry Bakken, “Dynamic Interpretations of Civic Duty: Implications for Governance,” International Journal of Organization Theory and Behavior 6, no. 3 (Fall 2003).
3.
Vera Vogelsang-Coombs, “The Dialogues on Executive Reorganization” (PhD diss., Washington University, 1985), 406-7.
4.
Norton E. Long, “Bureaucracy and Constitutionalism,” American Political Science Review 46, no. 3 (September 1952): 817.
5.
Ibid., 813.
6.
Harold D. Lasswell, Psychopathology and Politics (New York, NY: Viking Press, 1960), accessed May 8, 2015, http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/elections/election1864.html, Chapter X.
7.
E. E. Schattschneider, The Semi-Sovereign People: A Realist’s Views of Democracy in America (Boston, MA: Wadsworth, 1960).
8.
Vogelsang-Coombs and Bakken, “Dynamic Interpretations of Civic.”
9.
Sissela Bok, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1989), 31.
10.
John Dunn, “Trust,” in A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, ed. Robert E. Goodin and Philip Pettit (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1993), 641.
11.
Goodsell, The New Case for Bureaucracy, 152.
12.
Dunn, “Trust,” in A Companion to Contemporary.
13.
Bok, Lying: Moral Choice in Public, 26-7.
14.
Charles T. Goodsell, “A New Vision for Public Administration,” Public Administration Review 66, no. 4 (July/August 2006): 634.
15.
Goodsell, The New Case for Bureaucracy, 168.
16.
Frederick C. Mosher, Democracy and the Public Service, 2nd ed. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1982).
17.
Long, “Bureaucracy and Constitutionalism,” 814.
18.
Cheryl S. King, Camilla Stivers, and Collaborators, Government Is Us: Public Administration in an Anti-Government Era (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998).
19.
Long, “Bureaucracy and Constitutionalism,” 814, 816.
20.
Ibid., 813.
21.
Ibid., 816.
22.
Ibid., 813.
23.
Morris P. Fiorina and Samuel J. Abrams, Disconnect: The Breakdown of Representation in American Politics (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009).
24.
Goodsell, The New Case for Bureaucracy, 199-200.
25.
Ibid., 141.
Goodsell, “A New Vision for Public,” 633.
26.
Goodsell, The New Case for Bureaucracy, 142.
27.
Ibid., 141-2.
28.
Long, “Power and Administration,” 263.
Kenneth R. Mayer and Kevin Price, “Unilateral Presidential Powers: Significant Executive Orders, 1949-1999,” Presidential Studies 32, no. 2 (June 2002).
29.
Fiorina and Abrams, Disconnect: The Breakdown of Representation, 166.
30.
Larry D. Terry, Leadership of Public Bureaucracies: The Administrator as Conservator (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1995).
31.
Brian J. Cook, “Politics, Political Leadership, and Public Management,” Public Administration Review 58, no. 3 (May/June 1998): 225.
32.
John A. Rohr, To Run a Constitution (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 1986), 182.
33.
Cook, “Politics, Political Leadership, and Public,” 225.
34.
Camilla Stivers, “Citizenship Ethics in Public Administration,” Public Administration Public Policy 86 (2001): 146.
35.
Lasswell, Psychopathology and Politics, Chapter X.
36.
Hanna F. Pitkin, The Concept of Representation (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1972), 233.
37.
James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, Democratic Governance (New York, NY: Free Press, 1995), 30.
38.
Amy Gutmann and Dennis F. Thompson, Why Deliberative Democracy?(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).
39.
Dennis F. Thompson, Political Ethics and Public Office (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987).
Robert E. Goodin, “The Contribution of Political Science,” in A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, ed. Robert E. Goodin and Philip Pettit (Cambridge, MS: Blackwell Publishers, 1993).
40.
Long, “Power and Administration,” 259, 263.
In James P. Pfiffner, “The Institutionalist: A Conversation with Hugh Heclo,” Public Administration Review 67, no. 3 (May/June 2007): 420.
41.
Brian J. Cook, “Regime Leadership and New Public Governance,” in New Public Governance: A Regime Perspective, ed. Douglas F. Morgan and Brian J. Cook (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2014), 205.
Richard T. Green, Lawrence F. Keller, and Gary L. Wamsley, “Reconstituting a Profession for American Public Administration,” Public Administration Review 53, no. 6 (November/December 1993): 520.
42.
Cook, “Politics, Political Leadership, and Public.”
43.
Green, Keller, and Wamsley, “Reconstituting a Profession for American.”
Cook, “Regime Leadership and New Public,” in New Public Governance: A Regime.
44.
George H. Frederickson, “Can Public Officials Correctly Be Said to Have Obligations to Future Generations?,” Public Administration Review 54, no. 5 (September/October 1994): 461.
Specifically, Frederickson (1994, 460) defines equity to mean the philosophical treatment of fairness and social equity as “a more equal distribution of opportunities, costs, and benefits in social and political domains.”
45.
Ibid., 463.
46.
Cook, “Regime Leadership and New Public,” in New Public Governance: A Regime, 205.
47.
John A. Rohr, “Professionalism, Legitimacy, and the Constitution,” Public Administration Quarterly 8, no. 4 (Winter 1985): 415.
48.
March and Olsen, Democratic Governance, 240.
49.
Cook, “Regime Leadership and New Public,” in New Public Governance: A Regime.
50.
Chairperson Biermann, 2007, quoted in Vogelsang-Coombs, Keller, and Murray, “Council-Manager Government at 100,” in Citizenship: A Reality Far.
51.
Ibid., 183.
52.
Green, Keller, and Wamsley, “Reconstituting a Profession for American,” 520.
A financial crisis and community unrest drove the mayor to share power with citizens, but he used citizen empowerment as an instrument to maintain his political support in a changing and increasingly diverse community. Given the instrumental nature of citizen empowerment and the turnover in the mayor’s office, the achievement of political equilibrium in this municipality derived from Murray’s leadership as a constitutional professional was temporary.
53.
Green, Keller, and Wamsley, “Reconstituting a Profession for American,” 521.
54.
Cook, “Regime Leadership and New Public,” in New Public Governance: A Regime, 205.
55.
Vogelsang-Coombs, Keller, and Murray, “Council-Manager Government at 100,” in Citizenship: A Reality Far.
56.
Rohr, To Run a Constitution, 181-2.
57.
Paul H. Appleby, “Making Sense of Things in General,” Public Administration Review 22, no. 4 (December 1962): 175.
58.
Johan P. Olsen, “Maybe It Is Time to Rediscover Bureaucracy,” Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 16, no. 1 (March 2006): 18.
59.
Rohr, To Run a Constitution, 181.
60.
Ibid., 182.
61.
Rohr, “Professionalism, Legitimacy, and the Constitution,” 415.
62.
Rohr, To Run a Constitution, 183.
63.
Ibid., 184.
64.
Ibid., 187.
65.
Ibid., 192.
66.
Green, Keller, and Wamsley, “Reconstituting a Profession for American,” 522.
67.
Rohr, To Run a Constitution, 193.
68.
Ibid., 193.
69.
Brian J. Cook, Bureaucracy and Self-Government: Reconsidering the Role of Public Administration in American Politics, 2nd ed. (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 2014), 236.
70.
March and Olsen, Democratic Governance, 89, 135.
71.
John A. Rohr, “The Problem of Professional Ethics,” in Essential of Government Ethics, ed. Peter Madsen and Jay M. Shafritz (New York, NY: Meridian Books, 1992), 437.
72.
Ibid., 432, 434.
73.
For example, the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA 2013a) has as a core principle “to demonstrate personal integrity.” In a companion document, ASPA members are guided to practice this principle by “resist[ing] political, organizational, and personal pressures to compromise ethical integrity,” by “support[ing] others who are subject to these pressures,” and by “conduct[ing] official acts without partisanship and favoritism” (ASPA 2013b). Similarly, the ethics code of the International City/County Management Association (ICMA 2015) advises city and county managers to “resist any encroachment on professional responsibilities, believing the member should be free to carry out official policies without interference, and handle each problem without discrimination on the basis of principle and justice.” Sanctions may be imposed on ASPA or ICMA members who fail or refuse to uphold their professional ethics codes.
74.
Cook, Bureaucracy and Self-Government: Reconsidering, 234.
75.
Rohr, To Run a Constitution, 188.
76.
Lasswell, Psychopathology and Politics, 291.
77.
Ibid., 312.
78.
Goodin, “The Contribution of Political,” in A Companion to Contemporary, 175.
79.
John A. Rohr, “The Constitution in Public Administration: A Report on Education,” American Review of Public Administration 16, no. 4 (Winter 1982): 430.
80.
Ibid., 430-1.
81.
Douglas F. Morgan, “Educating Leaders for New Public Governance,” in New Public Governance: A Regime Perspective, ed. Douglas F. Morgan and Brian J. Cook (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2014), 271.
82.
Camilla Stivers, Governance in Dark Times: Practical Philosophy for Public Service (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2008), 144–5.
83.
March and Olsen, Democratic Governance, 60, 181.
84.
Evan Berman et al., Human Resource Management in Public Service: Paradoxes, Processes, and Problems, 4th ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publishers, 2013), 476.

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Cleveland State University, Beachwood, OH, USA
Vera Vogelsang-Coombs

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Vogelsang-Coombs, V. (2016). The New American Way of Ethics: The Political Ethics of Constitutionally Centered Public Service. In: The Political Ethics of Public Service. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-49400-9_12

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-49400-9_12
Published: 06 May 2016
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-51845-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-49400-9
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