Book Reviews

This is the fourth in a series of blog posts inspired by reading Susan Neiman's book Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists (Princeton, 2008). One problem Americans have with respect to government ethics is that one of our society’s principle ideologies is that everyone seeking his or her se…

This is the third in a series of blog posts inspired by reading Susan Neiman's book Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists (Princeton, 2008). One of her topics is how an individual’s organizational environment can greatly affect his or her conduct. Her goal is not to excuse misconduct, but t…

This is the second in a series of blog posts inspired by reading Susan Neiman’s book Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists (Princeton, 2008). A controversial aspect of government ethics involves intentions or motivations. Must an official be shown to have intended to act unethically in orde…

I recently read Susan Neiman’s book Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists (Princeton, 2008) and found a lot there of value to government ethics, even though government ethics doesn’t generally involve the big questions of moral philosophy (see my blog post on this). I am going to write a fe…

It is a truism of government ethics that a sense of entitlement is an important cause of unethical conduct. People who feel entitled to the power they wield feel they have the right to deviate from ethical norms in ways others do not (see my blog post on this topic). Now there is research that supp…

Reading Garry Wills' A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government (1999) made me think about how anti- and pro-government feelings jive with views on government ethics. People who believe that government is a good way to deal with community-wide matters usually believe that the pu…

A chapter in Jonah Lehrer's new book, How We Decide, sheds some interesting light on ethical decision-making. The book shares the latest discoveries neuroscientists have made using hightech views of the brain at work, especially when it is making various sorts of decisions. The chapter called "The …

I recently read a fascinating classic study by Albert O. Hirschman (Institute of Advanced Study) called Shifting Involvements: Private Interest and Public Action (1982). This book focuses on the various tensions between private consumption and public action. It only touches on government ethics iss…

Adolf Eichmann is the iconic extreme of the government bureaucrat. Not that any of us will hopefully ever be given orders like the ones he was given, but his simply following orders makes anyone question his or her own simply following orders. There’s a lot more about government ethics that can be …