Case Study of Cuyahoga County, Ohio: The American Way of Ethics

Abstract

The book opens with the case of influence peddling in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, to illustrate “the American way of ethics”—a condition that treats governmental ethical breaches with quick apolitical fixes, including the conspicuous consumption of ethics products, such as ethics codes and training, and the adoption of legal sanctions, which fail as remedies because the partisan status quo remains intact. Although aimed at ameliorating public outrage over corrupted governments, the quick ethics fixes dismantle the discretion of career public servants by reducing their moral responsibility and criminalizing democratic public service. The book then suggests the political ethics of public service as an alternative providing a better approach for balancing change and continuity in morally tainted governments without demonizing career public servants.