Book Reviews | City Ethics

July 23, 2015

Summer Reading: "Manipulatory Politics"

Robert E. Goodin's book Manipulatory Politics (Yale Univ. Press, 1980) is valuable for its "cataloguing [of] various modes of political manipulation," as the author wrote in his Preface. Goodin found only a few of the cases "ethically worrisome," but the fact that I disagree does not make the catal…

June 24, 2015

Summer Reading: Jonathan Rauch on the Positives of Machines

Last month, Jonathan Rauch published a sincere and well-written defense of political machines, entitled "Political Realism: How Hacks, Machines, Big Money, and Back-Room Deals Can Strengthen American Democracy" (Brooking Institution Press; available free as a PDF or e-book). Although the essay scar…

Resources & Learning June 12, 2015

Summer Reading: Lee Drutman's "The Business of America Is Lobbying"

Lee Drutman’s The Business of America is Lobbying: How Corporations Became Politicized and Politics Became More Corporate (2015) is an excellent book about corporate lobbying at the federal level. Drutman is especially good on the reasons for the growth of this lobbying, particularly the reasons wh…

Resources & Learning June 8, 2015

A Voter's Obligation to the Public Interest

Last week, Edward B. Foley, who directs Election Law @ Moritz, Ohio State's law school, put online the draft of a paper entitled "Voters as Fiduciaries." The paper makes the argument that voters should not be voting their personal interests, but should instead be expressing their best judgment of w…

Resources & Learning April 20, 2015

City Ethics Publications

NEW! The Regulation of Local Lobbying. The first book on the subject of local government lobbying is now available. By Robert Wechsler, Director of Research-Retired.Local Government Ethics Programs in a Nutshell, a free 27-page introduction to the topic. By Robert Wechsler, Director of Research-Ret…

March 30, 2015

Spring Reading: Corruption in America IV

This is the fourth of four blog posts on Zephyr Teachout's excellent new book, Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin's Snuff Box to Citizens United (Harvard Univ. Press). Extortion and Pay to Play Teachout talks about the difference in the origins of bribery and extortion statutes, the firs…

March 30, 2015

Spring Reading: Corruption in America III

This is the third of four blog posts on Zephyr Teachout's excellent new book, Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin's Snuff Box to Citizens United (Harvard Univ. Press). Other Anti-Corruption Laws Teachout is good at presenting laws as anti-corruption laws which are not usually considered t…

Resources & Learning October 7, 2014

The Consequences of Academic Noninvolvement in the Reform of Government Conflicts of Interest Programs

An essay of mine has appeared in the new issue of the journal Public Integrity, a special issue entitled "Changing of the Guard: The 75th American Society for Public Administration Anniversary Symposium: Visions and Voices of Ethics in the Profession" (Fall 2014, Vol. 16, No. 4). Since the journal …

Resources & Learning May 21, 2014

Spring Reading: The Day of Judgment

I just finished reading a masterpiece of a novel about Nuoro, a town in Sardinia: Salvatore Satta's The Day of Judgment, translated from the Italian by Patrick Creagh. It's a very wise, witty, and sad novel. Here are a few pearls of wisdom that shed light on local government ethics. "Being mayor m…

Resources & Learning May 15, 2014

Spring Reading: Alan Rosenthal on Lobbying I

Although twenty years old and about the state level, Alan Rosenthal's The Third House: Lobbyists and Lobbying in the States (CQ Press, 1993) provides valuable food for thought about lobbying at the local level. This first of two posts looks at such topics as the importance of relationships to lobby…

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