The management of ideals: a political perspective on ethics

Abstract

Both bureaucratic and democratic ideals are essential elements of the public administration ethos, yet these two sets of ideals have not been effectively integrated in an ethic of public administration. Ethics has been approached primarily from a rule-oriented bureaucratic perspective that gives little guidance to administrators who wish to promote democratic ideals and function ethically in an increasingly political administrative role. This article suggests that ethics can be approached, instead from a political perspective that recognizes public administrators as political authorities legitimated and constrained by the same belief system that legitimates and constrains elected and judicial officials. Approaching ethics from a political perspective permits administrators to pursue democratic ideals by exercising political judgment and participating in the political process of policy making. At the same time, a political ethic of public administration establishes constraints on such administrative activity through a recognition that bureaucratic values are essential to the legitimacy of public administration. Therefore, active involvement in the political environment is ethical only in the pursuit of democratic values and only if it does not undermine the legitimacy of public administration. Professional ethics can be understood as the set of ideal standards whose purpose is to translate the profession's ethos (the fundamental principles, rules, and ideals that form its distinctive character) into everyday practice. Public administrators are still striving to develop an understanding of the ethics of their profession, not because it is so new, but because understanding of the profession and its role in government has changed dramatically over the years. The perception of administration as a managerial endeavor separate from politics has been largely abandoned in favor of the view that public administration is inescapably a part of politics; administrative action is no longer viewed as value neutral but rather as heavily value laden. Although the ethic of “neutral competence” effectively translated the ideal of a politics/administration dichotomy into practice, when that ideal was no longer accepted as descriptive of administrative reality, the search began for a new ethic of public administration. Such was the state of discourse about public administration ethics 20 years ago at the time of the original Minnowbrook conference. Then, a group of faculty members, denying the possibility of a value-free science of administration, set out to define a new, and more egalitarian, ethic of public administration. Since that time many others have joined in the effort to illuminate the meaning of the public administrator's role in government, the ideals associated with the profession, and its ethics and responsibilities. Even so, many still view public administration ethics as ambiguous and confusing. This article is an interpretation of the complex set of ideals that make up the ethos of public administration, followed by the suggestion that a different perspective on administrative ethics must be adopted if professional ideals are to be translated into practice. Such a change is needed to move public administration ethics beyond its present state of confusion.