Book Reviews | City Ethics

August 13, 2011

Ethics in Congress V - Constituent Service (Summer Reading)

Constituent service is a basic legislative role that I have pretty much ignored in my blog (click here to read the principal exception). Government ethics focuses too much on votes and self-serving conduct, and too little on the ways in which council members and other government officials help thei…

Ethics Codes & Reform August 10, 2011

Ethics in Congress II - The Principles of Legislative Ethics and the Appearance Standard

In my first post on Dennis Thompson's book Ethics in Congress: From Individual to Institutional Corruption, I quoted him as saying, "What makes the conduct improper is institutional in the sense that it violates principles that promote the distinctive purposes of the institution." What are these pr…

Ethics Codes & Reform August 10, 2011

Ethics in Congress I - Institutional Corruption (Summer Reading)

My second volume of summer reading is a classic, Dennis F. Thompson's Ethics in Congress: From Individual to Institutional Corruption (1995). Despite the book's title, Thompson (a professor at Harvard) has a great deal to say about government ethics that is equally applicable to city and county leg…

July 26, 2011

Being Wrong I (Summer Reading)

It's arguable that a bigger problem than unethical conduct in local government is the way local officials respond to allegations of government ethics violations. Kathryn Schulz's excellent book, Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error (2010), provides perspective on some of the ways official…

Resources & Learning May 26, 2011

Giving Voice to Values II

This is the second half of my look at Mary C. Gentile's 2010 book, Giving Voice to Values. Naming and Framing Framing is central to acting on one's values. So often ethics matters have already, effectively, been framed (and justified) by an organization. There are accepted truisms (this is the way …

Resources & Learning May 25, 2011

Giving Voice to Values I

The failure to deal responsibly with conflicts of interest has many causes, but the principal cause is the silence of those who are not directly responsible. I've written several times about some of the reasons for this silence: fear, justifications, lack of moral courage, and a lack of a feeling …

Resources & Learning May 12, 2011

The Jersey Sting

Two months ago, a book was published called The Jersey Sting, by two Star-Ledger reporters, Ted Sherman and Josh Margolin. It provides the history of an enormous federal sting operation which led to the arrest of dozens of government officials, most of them from local governments, on July 23, 2009 …

Resources & Learning April 11, 2011

Blind Spots VIII — How to Handle Our Blind Spots

Max H. Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel, the authors of the new book Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What's Right and What to Do about It (Princeton University Press), present several ways of dealing with the many problems they raise in their book. One solution is to align what they call our "want" an…

Resources & Learning April 10, 2011

Blind Spots VII — Indirect Blindness and Moral Compensation

I've noted on several occasions that indirect conflicts are among the most problematic areas in government ethics. Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What's Right and What to Do about It, a new book by Max H. Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel (Princeton University Press), looks into some of the psychologi…

Resources & Learning April 9, 2011

Blind Spots VI — Psychological Cleansing and Obfuscation

The denial of unethical behavior, which usually occurs long after the behavior itself, is usually the worst part of an ethics scandal, the adding of insult to injury. The public is faced with two possibilities when an official denies that he did something unethical. This dilemma is well described i…

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