Public Administration Ethics

Abstract

Public administration ethics today is dominated by two distinct ethical frameworks: the bureaucratic ethos, which stresses efficiency and strict obedience to elected officials, and the democratic ethos, which stresses adherence to certain higher order moral principles embedded in the notion of democratic government. Both the bureaucratic and democratic ethos are foundational in that each is based on the search for certain universal or quasi-universal principles thought to imply moral obligation, from which ethical behavior may be deduced or judged. The authors argue that public administration ought to consider a third, or “postmodern,” approach to administrative ethics, one that is dialogic rather than foundational. The dialogic approach begins with the question of ontology, or in other words, the question of being. By considering the shortcomings of foundational approaches to administrative ethics and taking seriously a dialogic approach, public administration can better understand the limitations of its own methods and the way in which these methods are themselves products of a particular approach to society and its regulation. Discovering the hidden assumptions behind the traditional approaches to administrative ethics thus creates the space for an understanding of public administration that sees itself as a truly human activity.