‘Name’
‘Instructor’s name’
Public sector ethics is a broad topic and usually encompasses the components of the public administrator’s primary responsibility as a ‘steward’ to the general public. But nowadays we see that the bureaucracy of this country functions like an organization whose responsibility is nothing more than organizing and managing the implementation of public policies, with a detached managerial perfection. Their decisions are based on logical and operational factors rather than on ethical perspectives. Louis Gawthrop, in the chapter ‘Rediscovering Democracy: Is Anybody Listening’, criticizes the way in which public sector enterprises are viewed as modern day corporations and are run by the use of management principles rather than ethical principles. He reminisces how the democracy in this country has formed on the basis of the need to “strengthen, defend, preserve and comfort each other”. In this chapter he traces how gradually the system of democratic governance which was guided by the principles of both efficiency and integrity, transformed into pathos of private plunder. He delineates how bureaucracy was born and how subsequent governments adopted various managerial principles to inculcate accountability and measurability of outcomes in the functioning of bureaucracy. This according to him has transferred the modern public administrators into executives driven by goals, objectives and criteria for excellence, and has driven the ethical aspect out of their considerations. He cites many examples to drive home his point, one of them being the Algore report on the federal executive branch of 1993, in which the word ‘customer’ features 214 times, whereas ‘citizen’ appears a mere 18 times.
His points are highly valid particularly considering the fact that today there is a huge gap between the legally laid down duties of a public servant and what the public expects out of them. It is common to hear from a public servant accused of an unethical conduct that ‘he has not done anything illegal’. Here is the fine print, if he does not do anything against the written down legal codes he is not punishable by law. But being a public servant is lot more than abiding by a set of rigid rules. The public and the founders of this great democratic system expects a person in public service to exhibit, honesty, accountability, integrity, trustworthiness, openness and an overall ethical approach. But unlike a corporate organization, rules for governing and running a public sector body cannot be written down, because unless there is an inherent honesty in people, a set of ethical codes would not serve the purpose. As Cooper points out in his book The Responsible Administrator: An Approach to Ethics for the Administrative Role, responsibility is the key to ethics in public administration. The chapter 2 of his book stresses on the requisite for, a theoretical perspective of the role of ethics in public administration. This perspective, according to him, should be developed by exposing the public administrators to various studies, deliberations with colleagues and self-motivated inquiries.
“Hypothetical question: If you had free reign over classified networks for long period of time, say, 8 ‐ 9 months, and you saw incredible things, awful things, things that belonged in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC, what would you do?”
- Bradley Manning
Her dilemma aptly portrays the crossroads public servants often encounter during their professional journey. It is what some scholars call the choice between right vs. right. Her leaks created mayhem across the globe and she was accused of being a traitor by the pentagon and is now imprisoned for her crimes. But the exposure of the corruptions of the Arab governments, which was made known to the public due to her leaks, was the major catalyst for ‘Arab Spring’, which is a series of protests that took place across the Arab world which overthrew corrupt governments. In fact the Amnesty international had produced a letter in support of Presidential pardon for her, citing that her activities had enabled exposure of human right violations.
Manning’s case is a popular one, which we all have heard and read about, and presents a perfect example of the difficulty in choices, a public servant faces. Should she have abided by the law and remained loyal to her post or department, or was she right in taking the decision to go public with the classified files, with the view that her exposure might just stop human right violations and may be create a change in the system? This is a question to ponder with a no definitive answer but what it does is reiterate the necessity for an ethical framework in the public administration domain as advocated by Cooper and Gawthrop.
