One section of Haidt's book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (Pantheon, 2012) is entitled "We Are All Intuitive Politicians." The section begins with a recognition of the centrality of accountability not just in government, but in all our relations with people. "Human beings," he says, "are the world champions of cooperation beyond kinship, and we do it in large part by creating systems of formal and informal accountability.

In his book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (Pantheon, 2012), Jonathan Haidt identifies one of the biggest obstacles to government ethics in the U.S.:  the fact that we have an individualistic society, placing individuals at the center, rather than the more common sociocentric society, which subordinates the needs of individuals to the needs of groups and institutions.

This is the first of a series of posts that will pull out valuable pieces from my new book Local Government Ethics Programs.