Book Reviews
Ethics in Congress V - Constituent Service (Summer Reading)
Robert Wechsler
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 their
constituents in special or inappropriate ways. Constituent service
is central to Dennis F.
Ethics in Congress II - The Principles of Legislative Ethics and the Appearance Standard
Robert Wechsler
Ethics in Congress I - Institutional Corruption (Summer Reading)
Robert Wechsler
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 legislators.
Giving Voice to Values II
Robert Wechsler
This is the second half of my look at Mary C. Gentile's 2010 book, Giving Voice to Values.
Naming and Framing
Naming and Framing
Giving Voice to Values I
Robert Wechsler
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 of professional obligation.
The Jersey Sting
Robert Wechsler
Two months ago, a book was published called The
Jersey Sting, by two Star-Ledger reporters, Ted Sherman and Josh
Margolin.
Blind Spots VIII — How to Handle Our Blind Spots
Robert Wechsler
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.
Blind Spots VII — Indirect Blindness and Moral Compensation
Robert Wechsler
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 psychological aspects of the indirectness
problem.
Blind Spots VI — Psychological Cleansing and Obfuscation
Robert Wechsler
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
in 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.