The Public Administration Profession

Policy, Management, and Ethics

Bradley S. Chilton, Stephen M. King, Viviane E. Foyou, J. Scott McDonald

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351136365
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Asuntos públicos y administración

While many introductory public administration textbooks contain a dedicated chapter on ethics, The Public Administration Profession is the first to utilize ethics as a lens for understanding the discipline. Analyses of the ASPA Code of Ethics are deftly woven into each chapter alongside complete coverage of the institutions, processes, concepts, persons, history, and typologies a student needs to gain a thorough grasp of public service as a field of study and practice. Features include:

• A significant focus on "public interests, " nonprofit management, hybrid-private organizations, contracting out and collaborations, and public service at state and local levels.
• A careful examination of the role that religion may play in public servants' decision making, as well as the unignorable and growing role that faith-based organizations play in public administration and nonprofit management at large.
• End-of-chapter ethics case studies, key concepts and persons, and dedicated "local community action steps" in each chapter.
• Appendices dedicated to future public administration and nonprofit career management, writing successful papers throughout a student's career, and professional codes of ethics.
• A comprehensive suite of online supplements, including: lecture slides; quizzes and sample examinations for undergraduate and graduate courses containing multiple choice, true-false, identifications, and essay questions; chapter outlines with suggestions for classroom discussion; and suggestions for use of appendices, e.g., how to successfully write a short term paper, a brief policy memo, resume, or a book review.

Providing students with a comprehensive introduction to the subject while offering instructors an elegant new way to bring ethics prominently into the curriculum, The Public Administration Profession is an ideal introductory text for public administration and public affairs courses at the undergraduate or graduate level.

PART I
Foundations of the Public Administration Profession

CHAPTER 1
The Public Interests¹

“Advance the Public Interest. Promote the interests of the public and put service to the public above service to oneself.”

—(Code of Ethics, American Society for Public Administration, 2013)

Box 1.1 Chapter Objectives

1. Introduce yourself to the public administration profession, including the plural concept of the public interests, definitions of public administration, private versus public administration, and professionalism.
2. Define the plural concept of public interests and distinguish between ethical virtue, utility and duty perspectives of the public interests, emphasizing virtue, utilitarian, and deontological ethical theories.
3. Compare public interests perspectives of political philosophers, economists, and public administrators, and their contributions to the development of the concept of the public interests.
4. Critique the public interest standard regulations by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), with applications today to the internet, social media, and digital knowledge.

Introduction

We live in a time of crisis in public service ethics. The 2017 U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee reported that, “Over the past six months, the Office of Government Ethics has received 39,105 inquiries—up more than 5,000 percent over the comparable period leading up to President Obama’s 2012 election and first months in office.” While many want change, no one wants live with corruption and sociopathic upheaval of public bureaucrats. This book, The Public Administration Profession, posits a corrective for public service focused on ethics and public interests prescriptions from the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) Code of Ethics² and elsewhere. We focus on the plural concept of public interests—including the commons, regime values, ethics of caring, and moral readings of the Constitution. This is not your parents’ concept of the singular “public interest,” which was discarded by skeptics for imposition of the will to power with one right answer to the issues of public goods and services. Instead, this is a return to the etymological root which was always plural for others: pubes + koinon (Greek, “to be mature and take care of others”).³ This is also a new pluralistic concept of the public interests emerging from close empirical data that belie the reality of shared meanings of public goods and service, but with variet ies of answers. While we may still use the “public interest” here and there as we continue our analysis in this book, we imply a plural meaning, and seek to use “the public interests” (emphasis added) to make our points. Further, we present an overview of public administration featuring ethics woven into its heart. Rather than push ethics into a back corner, we integrate ethics chapter by chapter with all the typical institutions, processes, concepts, persons, history, and typologies as found in most public administration surveys. We prominently feature one precept per chapter from the ASPA Code of Ethics—as well as other ethical sources—with full discussion, examples, self-analysis, and applications with professional enforcement mechanisms. Further, unlike other survey texts, we expand coverage of information technology, nonprofit organizations, faith-based organizations, hybrid-private organizations, contracting out and collaborations, and greater attention to public service at the state and local government levels. We also include end-of-chapter ethics case studies, lists of key concepts and persons, and local community action steps—as well as appendices on writing papers, on personal career management, and professional ethics codes. Thus, our text may be useful for pre- and post-integration of ethics as both an introduction and an exit-capstone in helping shape the future public administration profession.

In contrast to our current era of baby-boomer sociopaths, you may have heard about times or places⁴ in America that people came together for a common goal, and put service to the public above service to oneself—as in the ethics precept quoted above from the Code of Ethics of the American Society of Public Administration.⁵ Like World War II, when folks gave up metal or rationed gasoline and sugar to fight Nazi fascists? Or after the tragic terrorism events of September 11, 2001? Or perhaps you recall the efforts of police, firefighters, and other first responders who rescued flooded families in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, or in New Jersey after Hurricane Sandy? Or members of the U.S. armed service in the global war on terrorism? Or maybe you’ve seen these united, exhausted but heroic public servants on the streets where you live after that nearby memorable but tragic event, e.g., a tornado, a flood, an earthquake, or other massive tragedy? Do you remember how everyone came to each other and tried to work together, Republican and Democrat, liberal and conservative, Right and Left? Do you remember your feelings in seeing people working together in unity who were former bickering political enemies? Do you remember how people tried to see other people as fellow Americans rather than as competitors in the game of life, or as different in race or ethnicity, or viewpoint?

If you can envision these moments, moments of governance after a crisis or tragedy, you remember administration in the public interests. It is in these moments we see good people overcome the looking-out-for-number-one cult of contemporary American culture. It is often during times of great tragedy that we remember other lessons of our youth—lessons of empathy, goodwill toward others, and caring for one another. In these moments we often witness the best in ourselves and in one another.

Of course, we live in times of criticism and complaint about government—government can’t do this or it won’t do that. Some of this criticism is on target, but we argue much of this criticism is misplaced or overlooks a bigger picture. And we feel its impact throughout our lives. Let’s briefly visit some of how government impacts us daily. Let’s start with you lying in bed, your clock radio clicks on to one of your favorite songs—the radio station is federally licensed and must operate to established standards. You lift your head off the pillow—also made to federal standards—pull back the covers and pop off the mattress—made to federal standards. In the bathroom you run some water—provided to you by standards established by the federal government and usually maintained by your local government. Over to the toilet—made to federal, state, and local government standards to be low-flow to use less water. On to breakfast—those food labels are there because of government. And those organic blueberries—they can’t be labeled organic unless they meet a set of stringent standards. You catch the weather forecast before leaving for work—that’s from the National Weather Service, a part of the federal government. Off to work, drive or take the bus? The bus is usually operated by local government. But today, we’ll drive. The roads—potholes and all—government. In fact, just 3.3 percent of the numbers of interstate highways were in unsatisfactory condition in 2014, and the number of traffic fatalities has declined from 51,091 in 1980 to 32,674 in 2014, even though the number of licensed drivers increased from 145 million to 214 million.⁶ If you drive an interstate highway—that’s the federal and state governments. Your car must meet a boatload of federal standards, from mileage standards to dozens of safety requirements. From windshield wipers to the rearview mirror, to seatbelts and airbags—all required by government. Boring drive to work—check your cell phone for texts—many locales in the public sector won’t let you do that while driving because, based on federal research that found distracted driving is worse than drunk driving, your local government made driving while texting a crime.

So, what is this public sector? Many think of government jobs when they think of the public sector. We popularly imagine some kind of giant “think tank” where bureaucrats sit at desks all day behind closed doors in neat rows of cubicles, dreaming up things to regulate. The reality is that most government workers in the public sector aren’t bureaucrats. Steve Ballmer, former CEO of Microsoft, owner of the Los Angeles Clippers and co-owner of USAFacts with his wife (Connie), has found that government workers are really part of a “do tank” involved in direct service to the public. In fact, 90 percent of the 23 million public employees—federal, state, and local governments—are the public servants we come into daily service contact with in hospitals, transportation, parks and recreation, and else where. Nearly half work in education, and roughly 10 percent are active-duty military or involved in police protection.⁷ And that doesn’t include the millions of other public servants who work in nonprofit organizations, e.g., the Red Cross, the local YWCA, or in hybrid-private organizations that provide public services, e.g., the Medicare-supplement insurance company for your grandmother or other elderly relative.

The intention of our first chapter is to provide a meaningful “big picture” understanding of it all by investigation into the “public” of public administration—the public interests. We will principally examine it through historical and philosophical lenses, while focusing on working definitions, characteristics, and typologies of the public interests, with application to an ethics case study of the public interest standard in regulations of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Our summary reflections and implications for the public administration profession take us to the following chapters and applications. But, first, we must overview the meaning of public administration as a concept and as an academic discipline. And distinguish public enterprise from private enterprise.

What is Public Administration?

The many definitions of public administration are surprisingly diverse. While only some definitions of public administration explicitly include mention of the public interest(s), all include the closel...