Prudential Public Leadership: Promoting Ethics in Public Policy and Administration PDF
Preview Prudential Public Leadership: Promoting Ethics in Public Policy and Administration
PRUDENTIAL PUBLIC LEADERSHIP RECOVERING POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY SERIES EDITORS: THOMAS L. PANGLE AND TIMOTHY BURNS PUBLISHED BY PALGRAVE MACMILLAN: Lucretius as Theorist of Political Life By John Colman Shakespeare’s Political Wisdom By Timothy Burns Political Philosophy Cross-Examined: Perennial Challenges to the Philosophic Life Edited by Thomas L. Pangle and J. Harvey Lomax Eros and Socratic Political Philosophy By David Levy Xenophon the Socratic Prince: The Argument of the Anabasis of Cyrus By Eric Buzzetti Reorientation: Leo Strauss in the 1930s Edited by Martin D. Yaffe and Richard S. Ruderman Sexuality and Globalization: An Introduction to a Phenomenology of Sexualities By Laurent Bibard and translated by Christopher Edwards Modern Democracy and the Theological-Political Problem in Spinoza, Rousseau, and Jefferson By Lee Ward Prudential Public Leadership: Promoting Ethics in Public Policy and Administration By John Uhr PRUDENTIAL PUBLIC LEADERSHIP PROMOTING ETHICS IN PUBLIC POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION John Uhr PRUDENTIAL PUBLIC LEADERSHIP Copyright © John Uhr, 2015. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-50648-1 All rights reserved. First published in 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-70092-9 ISBN 978-1-137-50649-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-50649-8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Uhr, John. Prudential public leadership : promoting ethics in public policy and administration / John Uhr. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Political leadership. 2. Political ethics. I. Title. JC330.3.U47 2015 172—dc 3 2014050146 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: June 2015 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To the memory of Herbert J Storing (1928–1977) John A Rohr (1934–2011) This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix 1. Preview: Political Theory and Public Administration 1 Why leadership ethics matter 2. Leadership Rhetoric: Defining the Terms 25 Why leadership needs rhetoric 3. Prudential Leadership: The Power of Practical Reason 43 Why leadership needs prudence 4. Leadership Dilemmas: Debating Dirty Hands 61 Why leaders often get dirty hands 5. Pragmatism: Mill and the Ethics of Impact 83 Why the ethics of utility often works 6. Principle: Kant and the Ethics of Intent 103 Why the ethics of duty can work better 7. Prudence: Aristotle and the Ethics of Virtue 125 Why the ethics of virtue often works best 8. Leadership Accountability: Democracy and Deliberation 147 Why supporters provide accountability 9. Review: Ethics and Leadership in Public Administration 169 Why ethics is about agency References 189 Index 199 This page intentionally left blank ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book draws on my professional experience as a civil servant and a university academic. After obtaining my political science PhD in 1979 from the University of Toronto, Canada, I returned to my country of birth and citizenship to work as a researcher and administrator in the Australian Parliament in Canberra. I worked in and around Parliament for the best part of decade, with valuable detours in executive develop- ment training for the political executive and a very rewarding time in Washington, DC enjoying the benefits of a Harkness Fellowship allow- ing me to study US practices in professional development for civil ser- vants and for legislative officials. My time in Washington was mainly spent at the public policy program of the Brookings Institution, thanks to the friendship and care of Bruce Smith from that program. I also had some association with the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), in part because of the courtesy of Howard Penniman (who had edited AEI books on Australian elections) but more substantially because of the generosity of my former PhD supervisor, Walter F Berns, who had returned to the United States after a decade or so at the University of Toronto to teach at Georgetown University and work at the American Enterprise Institute. Berns died in January this year, at the age of 95, and his reputation will survive as an expert in what citizens need to know about the constitu- tional norms of liberal-democratic statecraft. Berns deserves first mention among those I here acknowledge because he marked out for me the dis- tinctive honor deserved by those rare public intellectuals who can excel both in the university lecture hall and in the public forum, using their special skills as educators and as advocates to deepen public deliberation over political matters. During my time in Washington many years ago, I got to know John Rohr of the school of public administration and pol- icy at Virginia Tech and author of the remarkably influential book Ethics for Bureaucrats. Rohr died in 2011 and I greatly value the many times we spent together, usually at meetings of the American Political Science Association, often exploring the implicit political theory of contemporary
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