A Distinct Public Administration Ethics?

Abstract

The public administration literature enumerates many values of attributes desirable in civil servants, and it proposes at least two paradigms or frameworks-a bureaucratic ethos and a democratic ethos-associated with such values. The writings also suggest the existence of a public administration ethic. The broader professional ethics literature has similarly posited that each profession has an ethics or morality of its own; in fact, the separatist thesis holds that such an acquired ethics is role-based and may take precedence over ordinary citizen ethics. This article reports the results of empirical research into a public administration ethic, by testing the importance of twelve public administration values among bureaucrats, elected officials, and voters. Within the last two decades or so there has been an outpouring of written works on the subject of ethics, particularly the ethics of those in government service. Numerous writers have identified ethical problems in government, called for moral reform and the enactment of ethics laws and codes, posited what are or should be the components of a bureaucratic and/or democratic ethos for public administration, identified one or more ideals or elements of such a moral guide, hypothesized about a grand theory of administrative ethics and the duties of bureaucrats, explored subject specific dilemmas in government policies, urged the teaching of ethics within the schools of public administration and public affairs, and suggested ethical guidance for practitioners of public management. Since Watergate and Vietnam the schools of public administration have introduced courses in ethics, texts for the field have been published, the American Society for Public Administration and others have promulgated or reissued their codes of ethics, and federal and state governments have enacted ethics laws-but government official scandals have continued. Public and private /-P/lRr6(1996):4:573-597 professional conduct in many fields has been scrutinized and 573/ Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory Conference on Ethics in Public Administration seriously questioned as never before. The questioning of public administration ethics is but a part of the reevaluation of ethics in many disciplines. Concurrent with the public administration ethics literature of the last twenty-five years and the increasing professionalization of the public service for the last several decades, there have been developments in the professional ethics literature as well, including the articulation of the separatist thesis, which suggests that professions have a morality or ethics of their own, different from and perhaps inconsistent with the morality of ethics of ordinary persons or the general public. Indeed, the separatist thesis holds that this acquired ethics is role based and may take precedence over ordinary citizen ethics. Principles, norms, and values for individual professions have been enumerated, described, defended, sometimes ordered, and compared in the professional ethics literature. L...

Creating Civic Bureaucrats

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