Responsible Governance: A Case Study Approach

A Case Study Approach

Steven G. Koven

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780765620606
• eBook ISBN: 9781317460879
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Labour Economics
• Index: Economics

This book is designed to show readers how ethics can constrain improper behavior. To demonstrate the relationship of ethics to good government, the author presents high profile case studies that were selected for their notoriety and their ability to connect the reader to fundamental ethical questions. Themes of public interest, natural law, and rule of law provide a framework for the case studies, which include torture (Abu Ghraib), impeachment (Clinton), competence (FEMA), electoral violation (DeLay), and historical corruption (machine politics). The chapters discuss concepts that help to define responsible behavior in terms of behavior in elections, honesty and competence, and international law.

Chapter 1

Responsible Governance

A Case Study Approach

Responsible governance is fundamental to the legitimacy, stability, trust, and credibility of government. Government officials therefore have an obligation to foster responsible actions and deter irresponsible behavior. This is not an easy task since perceptions and definitions of responsibility are often clouded, dependent upon time, place, setting, and situation at hand. Given this ambiguity, it is imperative to define the range of acceptable actions by representatives of the government. Simply stated, government officials should possess a clear idea of what is responsible and what is irresponsible, promoting the responsible and deterring the irresponsible.

This, however, is not as easy a task as it sounds. How are government officials to determine the fuzzy concept of responsibility? This book employs case studies to describe what in retrospect appear to be egregious violations of acceptable behavior. Cases describe both responsible and irresponsible actions in the context of specific times and places. The cases chosen should be familiar to even the most casual observer of American government. These high-profile cases are discussed in detail. Each case concludes with questions that probe the ethical nature of specific actions.

Important to the cases is their resolution in terms of punishment. Ethical lapses can be identified in the abstract or theoretical state. More relevant to the concept of responsible governance, however, is how public officials address those lapses. Are they severely punished, officially recognized with what amounts to slaps on the wrist, ignored, unofficially encouraged, or officially encouraged?

Penalties imposed reflect prevailing sentiment about how the existing political system interprets ethical violations. Penalties as well as the tone of reproach surrounding behavior convey a sense of acceptable and unacceptable behavior in a given time and place. This knowledge in turn is useful for assessing expectations of public officials and accepted means of chastising transgressions. It is postulated here that perceptions of responsible behavior for public sector workers are not static but fluid and that standards of responsibility are time- and place-sensitive. Responsibility therefore is a moving target, highly dependent upon the prevailing norms and values of given societies. Norms and values are considered in this text as fluid, but still centered in the dominant culture and history of a jurisdiction. Background culture and history are provided in the text in order to lay the foundation from which the concept of responsibility is constructed.

The concept of responsible governance is refined here through case study analysis of specific high-profile controversies. These case studies address not only the usual suspects in ethical lapses (sex and money) but also the issue of responsible behavior in times of war or struggles over political power. The legitimacy of torture as well as the legality of harming unarmed civilians is discussed through the cases of My Lai and Abu Ghraib. The limits of electoral manipulation are addressed in the DeLay controversy. The downside of patronage is observed in the Katrina case. The case studies not only relay the facts surrounding specific incidents, but also uncover the pulling and hauling of antagonistic forces locked in struggle to define acceptable and unacceptable behavior within the American political context.

The book recognizes that actions that define responsibility in governance are ever changing. At the height of the machine era in American politics, the use of inside information to amass wealth was standard operating procedure. The same action today would not be publicly accepted. At the time of the Kennedy administration, marital infidelity was not trumpeted in order to sell newspapers or increase television ratings. During the Mongol invasions of Asia and Eastern Europe, the slaughter of men, women, and children in villages or cities was accepted as a norm. Similarly, in many societies payments to law enforcement officials are condoned and justified as a way to supplement the incomes of poorly paid officers. Paying people to vote or plying them with alcohol as a reward is not unknown in American history. Money and politics always intermix and therefore the rationale for defining improper electoral behavior is not always clear. What is clear is that, at various periods of history, behavior that previously was viewed as morally acceptable becomes unacceptable. In a changing environment, the resolution of ethical conflicts sets new precedents that define the parameters of responsible public sector behavior. Such a “common law” perception sees the concept of responsibility as ever changing, but still grounded in history.

The case studies explored in this book cover a range of issues: sex, money, patronage, torture, murder, and electoral manipulation. All these issues relate to the official abuse of power and the struggles to define the legitimacy of specific actions. Alleged abuses of government officials involve the torture of prisoners (Iraq), general incompetence (New Orleans), electoral manipulation (DeLay machine politics), adultery and lying under oath (Clinton), and murder (My Lai).

Historical parallels can be found for contemporary controversies. Parallels exist between the political behavior of the machine era and more recent efforts by former congressman Tom DeLay to control the electoral process. Similarities exist between the abuse of enemy noncombatants in prisons in Iraq (Abu Ghraib) and the abuse of civilians in Vietnam (My Lai). The perceived incompetence and patronage appointments of the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) are matched by experiences of the machine era. Dishonesty and attempts to cover up embarrassing behavior are not unique to the Clinton administration.

Since history is said to repeat itself, exploration of how certain behavior was interpreted at a point in time is useful in identifying perceptions of public sector responsibility. The actions of government officials as well as praise or condemnation of those actions provide a mirror in which to view ethical norms. Responsible governance mandates that the behavior of public officials is consistent with the approved standards of the larger society. If behavior is not consistent with societal norms, then the legal system reverses the imbalance by punishing aberrant behavior. In such a scenario, corrective action establishes the parameters of acceptable behavior for others to follow. Uncertainty is erased through the legal system as well as the court of public opinion. Punishments are set to guide future behavior and to steer norms to a new point of equilibrium. In addition to the legal system, other forces, such as family, peers, churches, schools, and employers, act to influence behavior.

Responsible governance sustains the legitimacy of public institutions. It deters irresponsible actions and promotes positive public sector action. This book focuses on particular instances when the behavior of public officials appeared to go beyond the limits of acceptability, thereby arousing intense criticism. Through investigation of these actions, students will begin to formulate conceptions of ethical public sector behavior and responsible governance.

This chapter describes the basic context in which perceptions of ethics and responsibility have evolved. It is assumed that an understanding of this context is a prerequisite for understanding contemporary behavior as well as assessing the punishment for irresponsible action. First, however, the basic concept of responsible governance is identified.

The Concept of Responsible Governance

Various writers in the fields of political science and public administration have endeavored to identify the concept of responsible governance (Friedrich 1935; Finer 1941; Schubert 1960; Rohr 1989; Cooper 1998; Dobel 1998; Van Wart 1998; Adams and Balfour 1999; Geuras and Garofalo 2005). For political scientists, the quest for responsible governance addresses the distribution of power, an issue as old as political philosophy. Public administrators have also expended much time and energy defining the concept of responsibility. For public administration scholars, responsibility relates to the conduct of public officials within public organizations (Friedrich 1935; Finer 1936).

According to democratic theory, democratic government exists to serve the people (Pateman 1970; D. Thompson 1970; V. Thompson 1975; Gawthrop 1998). The rights of the people and the obligations of the government are laid out in governing documents such as national and state constitutions, in local ordinances, and in legal precedent. In a broad sense, therefore, governance involves aiding the public by promoting its health, welfare, security, freedom, and happiness. Government promotes the public through specific sets of tasks such as treating illnesses at public clinics, assessing who qualifies for public aid, conducting military patrols in foreign countries, driving city buses, arresting law offenders, interpreting the law, and settling child custody disputes.

Implicit in each of these tasks is the under-standing that responsible public organizations and representatives of those organizations will act in a manner that upholds the broad goals of aiding the people. Public sector behavior therefore must be consistent with furthering this objective. Public sector behavior in democracies also must be aligned with the nation’s law, the mission of the public organization, and higher (natural) law. Identifying violations of any of these mandates, however, is not always easy. The case studies discussed in this book will help to identify violations of the public interest, violations of natural law, and violations of the rule of law.

The cases reviewed describe the killing of civilians in times of war, abuse of prisoners, institutionalized bribery, manipulation of the political system, perjury of high officials, and other forms of irresponsible behavior. Each case describes individual actors who exemplify both responsible and irresponsible action. To place cases in context, a review of settlement patterns and changes in those patterns is instructive. Context helps readers understand perceptions of responsibility since perceptions, values, norms, culture, and expectations of governance are not formed out of thin air.

In a relatively young country such as the United States, it is important to look to settlement patterns in the original colonies, the values of early settlers, the political beliefs of early settlers, the values of immigrants, and the moral controversies that emerged in the nation. In essence, this book argues that the norms of early settlers, efforts to reify early values, efforts to accept new values, and the continuous struggle to define the concept of responsible government shapes current ethical controversies.

The Context of American Governance

Early Settlements

America as we know it today is a composite of the people that settled the new territory as well as later immigrants. It is a cliché to describe the United States as a nation of immigrants; however, a mere 400 years ago indigenous Indians populated what we call America today. The new settlers came to Virginia, Massachusetts, the Delaware Valley, and the Appalachian region for a variety of reasons. Some sought their fortune, some religious freedom, while others were transported in chains. Each group brought with it its values, biases, conceptions of morality, and codes of conduct. Individual groups initially created their own settlements but after the Revolutionary War combined into a greater whole.

The ancestors of modern Americans did not migrate from only one country or continent, but most came from different parts of Western Europe. Early settlers, arriving from Spain, England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Holland, Africa, Germany, and Scandinavia, did not share identical religious, political, or social traditions. Later migrants included Poles, Hungarians, Lithuanians, Jews, Russians, Ukrainians, Czechs, Slovaks, Croats, Serbs, Italians, Portuguese, Greeks, Latin Americans, Chinese, and Japanese (Zelinsky 1973, 25). The perspectives of these later groups sometimes clashed and often merged with the views of earlier settlers.

Many historians believe that while the new groups exerted an influence on America’s ethical norms, the earliest settlers wielded the strongest sway. This perspective is summarized in what has been termed the Doctrine of First Effect Settlement. Zelinsky (1973, 13) notes that this doctrine is roughly analogous to the psychological principle of imprinting in very young animals. The doctrine posits that whenever an empty territory undergoes settlement or an earlier population is dislodged by invaders, the specific characteristics of the first group able to effect a viable, self-perpetuating society are of crucial significance for the later social and cultural geography of the area, no matter the size of the initial band of settlers. The activities of a relatively small number of initial colonizers can thus have a stronger, more lasting impact on the cultural geography of a place than the contributions of many immigrants a few generations later. The northeastern United States illustrates how early colonial patterns marked the cultural landscape. Applying the Doctrine of First Effect, Zelinsky concludes that the culture of the United States was decisively British; however, three non-British groups (aboriginal Indians, black Africans, and various European ethnic groups) also contributed to America’s culture (1973, 14).

Historian David Fischer (1989, 6) traces the creation of what we know as the United States to four large waves of English-speaking migrations. These early settlers came to the New World between 1629 and 1775, each group bringing its own sets of values and moral precepts. According to Fischer, the first wave represents an exodus of Puritans from the east of England to Massachusetts between 1629 and 1640. The second wave is traced to the migration of a small royalist elite and large numbers of indentured servants from the south of England to Virginia between 1642 and 1675. Movement from the North Midlands of England and Wales to the Delaware Valley between 1675 and 1725 represents the third great wave. Fischer identifies the final wave of migration to the new continent in the flow of English-speaking people from the borders of northern Britain and northern Ireland to the Appalachian backcountry between 1718 and 1775.

The four groups possessed many similarities as well as some differences. All these early settlers spoke English, nearly all were British Protestants, most lived under British law, and most were familiar with the concept of British political liberties. Differences between the groups, however, existed with regard to religion, culture, and economic perspectives. Prominent among the early influences on America were immigrants who settled in the Virginia and Massachusetts colonies.

Virginia and Massachusetts Influences

The first permanent English settlement in the United States was established in what is now called the Tidewater section of Virginia. The Tidewater was where the first slaves were transported to British North America, where white men first exercised the right of suffrage, where the first trial by jury was granted, where the first free school was started, and where the first manufacturing began. The Virginian experience, however, represents more than a number of firsts in American history; it represents the beginning of a new life for settlers.

Initially, strict guidelines were laid out for payment to the king of England for gold, silver, or copper that was mined in Virginia. Early times in the Virginia colonies were hard; the Jamestown settlers suffered famine, disease, despair, massacres, and civil war. To complicate matters, few of the original settlers were experienced in rural living, farming, or fishing. Many of the colonists were registered as “gentlemen,” a class between nobles and peasants. Some of the new settlers were too proud to work, but too poor to survive without working.

Facing disaster, Captain John Smith put the gentlemen to work, declaring that the sick would not starve but that every colonist should gather as much as he could or be banished. Smith persuaded the settlers to cut timber instead of looking for gold, to trade with Indians for corn, to plant crops, and to tend livestock that had been brought over from Britain (McDougal 2004, 42). Under Smith’s leadership, laws were established; wharves, warehouses, stables, churches, blockhouses, and defenses were built.

Early settlers in Virginia planted private lots of maize, beans, potatoes, carrots, and cucumbers. In 1612, a new variety of tobacco was introduced to the Chesapeake area and by 1618 Virginians were shipping 50,000 pounds of tobacco. Proceeds from the tobacco sales were used to buy food and other products. In 1629 the Virginians established a form of home rule and representative government through their House of Burgesses. By 1650 Virginia’s population passed 18,000, with many of the new settlers characterized as “distressed Cavaliers”—nobles who lost their land in England when they sided with the aristocracy in the English Civil War (1642–1651).

Extremes in the distribution of wealth characterized the early Virginia colony. A few families possessed large tracts of land that were worked by many indentured servants and slaves. Families such as the Byrds, Carters, Randolphs, and Masons founded great plantations. Many of the owners of the great plantations became eminent orators, soldiers, and statesmen (McDonald 1907, 6). Under the more than thirty-year tenure of Governor Sir William Berkeley (1642–1676), the colony’s population increased to 40,000 inhabitants and developed a social order that was very similar to the social order in the south of England in the seventeenth century.

Early Virginian society consisted of a very small and powerful class of landed gentry, a large majority of landless tenants, a small middle class, and in general a high level of poverty. The poor of Virginia—indentured servants, tenant farmers, free laborers who wandered from job to job, and dependent paupers—lived under degrading conditions; the situation of the working poor in the Chesapeake region resembled conditions in southern England (Fischer 1989,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1. Responsible Governance: A Case Study Approach
• 2. The Foundations of Responsible Governance
• 3. The Influence of Money on Elections
• 4. Images of Responsibility: Honesty and Patronage in Government
• 5. Responsibility and International Law
• 6. Conclusions
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author