In this groundbreaking book, J. Patrick Dobel describes and analyzes the elements that constitute integrity in public office. Drawing on case studies, memoirs, interviews, and fiction (e.g., John Le Carré), Dobel addresses such issues as when to resign and when to stay in office. He examines the temptations of power, the relation between private and public life, and the role of honor and prudence in making personal decisions. He applies not only moral theory but also the insights of history, organizational theory, and psychology. Unlike most political ethics books, Public Integrity puts personal responsibility at the center of public morality, examining not just the responsibilities of office but also the role of personal moral commitments and promises. This timely book reminds us of the importance of public integrity as well as the demands and challenges that often threaten that integrity, especially in a liberal democracy such as the United States.
The OECD Public Integrity Handbook provides guidance to government, business and civil society on implementing the OECD Recommendation on Public Integrity. The Handbook clarifies what the Recommendation’s thirteen principles mean in practice and identifies challenges in implementing them.
From the late nineteenth century through the 1970s, several government reform movements succeeded in controlling traditional types of public corruption. But has this historic success led to a false sense of security among public management scholars and professionals? As this book argues, powerful special interests increasingly find effective ways to gain preferential treatment without violating traditional types of public corruption prohibitions. Although the post-Watergate good government reform movement sought to close this gap, the 1980s saw a backlash against public integrity regulation, as the electorate in the United States began to split into two sharply different camps driven by very different moral value imperatives. Taking a historical view from the ratification of the U.S. Constitution through to the Trump administration, The Death of Public Integrity details efforts by reformers to protect public confidence in the integrity of government at the local, state, and federal levels. Arguing that progressives and conservatives increasingly live in different moral worlds, author Robert Roberts demonstrates the ways in which it has become next to impossible to hold public officials accountable without agreement on what constitutes immoral conduct. This book is required reading for students of public administration, public policy, and political science, as well as those interested in public service ethics.
Integrity in the Private and Public Domains explores the issue of public and private integrity in politics, the media, health, science, fund-raising, the economy and the public sector. Over twenty essays by well-known figures such as Amelie Rorty, David Vines, the late Hugo Gryn, Alan Montefiore and Hilary Lawson present a compelling insight into debates over integrity today. A key chapter of the book concerns the highly publicised donation to Oxford University by Gert-Rudolf Flick, an issue which attracted wide media attention by raising questions of fund-raising and the holocaust.
Public investment, and particularly infrastructure investment, is important for sustainable economic growth and development as well as public service provision. However, it is also vulnerable to capture and corruption.
Facts are and must be the coin of the realm in a democracy, for government "of the people, by the people and for the people," requires and assumes to some extent an informed citizenry. Unfortunately, for citizens in the United States and throughout the world, distinguishing between fact and fiction has always been a formidable challenge, often with real life and death consequences. But now it is more difficult and confusing than ever. The Internet Age makes comment indistinguishable from fact, and erodes authority. It is liberating but annihilating at the same time. For those wielding power, whether in the private or the public sector, the increasingly sophisticated control of information is regarded as utterly essential to achieving success. Internal information is severely limited, including calendars, memoranda, phone logs and emails. History is sculpted by its absence. Often those in power strictly control the flow of information, corroding and corrupting its content, of course, using newspapers, radio, television and other mass means of communication to carefully consolidate their authority and cover their crimes in a thick veneer of fervent racialism or nationalism. And always with the specter of some kind of imminent public threat, what Hannah Arendt called "objective enemies.'" An epiphanic, public comment about the Bush "war on terror" years was made by an unidentified White House official revealing how information is managed and how the news media and the public itself are regarded by those in power: "[You journalists live] "in what we call the reality-based community. [But] that's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality . . . we're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." And yet, as aggressive as the Republican Bush administration was in attempting to define reality, the subsequent, Democratic Obama administration may be more so. Into the battle for truth steps Charles Lewis, a pioneer of journalistic objectivity. His book looks at the various ways in which truth can be manipulated and distorted by governments, corporations, even lone individuals. He shows how truth is often distorted or diminished by delay: truth in time can save terrible erroneous choices. In part a history of communication in America, a cri de coeur for the principles and practice of objective reporting, and a journey into several notably labyrinths of deception, 935 Lies is a valorous search for honesty in an age of casual, sometimes malevolent distortion of the facts.
The integrity of knowledge that emerges from research is based on individual and collective adherence to core values of objectivity, honesty, openness, fairness, accountability, and stewardship. Integrity in science means that the organizations in which research is conducted encourage those involved to exemplify these values in every step of the research process. Understanding the dynamics that support â€" or distort â€" practices that uphold the integrity of research by all participants ensures that the research enterprise advances knowledge. The 1992 report Responsible Science: Ensuring the Integrity of the Research Process evaluated issues related to scientific responsibility and the conduct of research. It provided a valuable service in describing and analyzing a very complicated set of issues, and has served as a crucial basis for thinking about research integrity for more than two decades. However, as experience has accumulated with various forms of research misconduct, detrimental research practices, and other forms of misconduct, as subsequent empirical research has revealed more about the nature of scientific misconduct, and because technological and social changes have altered the environment in which science is conducted, it is clear that the framework established more than two decades ago needs to be updated. Responsible Science served as a valuable benchmark to set the context for this most recent analysis and to help guide the committee's thought process. Fostering Integrity in Research identifies best practices in research and recommends practical options for discouraging and addressing research misconduct and detrimental research practices.
Using anticorruption efforts in New York City to illustrate their argument, Anechiarico and Jacobs demonstrate the costly inefficiencies of pursuing absolute integrity. By proliferating dysfunctions, constraining decision makers' discretion, shaping priorities, and causing delays, corruption control - no less than corruption itself - has contributed to the contemporary crisis in public administration.
"Ethics and Integrity in Public Administration" presents cutting-edge perspectives on the role of ethics in public sector management - what it is and where it is going. The contributors include a cross-section of authoritative authors from around the globe, and from both the academy and government. They cover a wide range of topics, diverse theoretical and conceptual paradigms, and global examples, and provide a broader view than what is typically offered in other books. The book includes both theoretical insights and commentaries grounded in practice. Chapters are divided into three parts: Ethical Foundations and Perspectives, Ethical Management and Ethical Leadership, and International and Comparative Perspectives.
As with the first edition, this practical book is dedicated to building organizations of integrity. It has been written for students contemplating careers in public service, elected and appointed officials, administrators, and career public servants in America and abroad.
