John A. Rohr

The Study of Ethics in the P. A. Curriculum

The purpose of this article is to suggest a method for integrating the study of ethics into a public administration curriculum. Although the Watergate scandals succeeded in transforming ethics into a growth industry, it might be unwise to put too much stress on Watergate in discussing future curriculum developments. An obvious reason for this caution is that the primary offenders in Watergate were officials who were either elected or politically appointed rather than career bureaucrats.

Musings on the State: A Reply to Mark Rutgers’s “Traditional Flavors”

Mark Rutgers’s (2001) article “Traditional Flavors? The Different Sentiments in European and American Administrative Thought” prompted a spirited response from Richard Stillman (2001) in a subsequent issue of this journal in which, with characteristic thoroughness, he proposed nothing less than a sweeping “new agenda for administrative state research.” Like Stillman, I consider Rutgers’s article a challenging and provocative piece that requires further comment. Unlike him, however, I will rest content with a few observations on the substance of Rutgers’s argument. I do so secure in the knowledge that as far as relating Rutgers’s article to future research is involved, Richard Stillman has already done the heavy lifting. My comments are based on specific points in Rutgers’s text, which I identify by page and paragraph, counting broken paragraphs at the top of a page as the first paragraph of that page. Before examining his text, however, I must invite the reader’s attention to another article by Rutgers (2000), “Public Administration and the Separation of Powers in a CrossAtlantic Perspective.” The separation-of-powers article strikes me as a concrete application of the rather abstract ideas put forward in “Traditional Flavors.” I do not know if Rutgers would accept this assessment, but I do know he wrote the traditional flavors piece first, even though, in the perverse

Dicey’s Ghost and Administrative Law

Albert Venn Dicey, the great British constitutional scholar of the 19th century, is best known in the field of administrative law for his denial of even the possibility of administrative law in common-law countries. This article puts Dicey’s famous denial in a context that establishes the relevance of his constitutional scholarship for contemporary administrative law. Examples are drawn from the United Kingdom and the United States to support this position.

French Constitutionalism and the Administrative State A Comparative Textual Study

This article examines the relationships between constitutionalism and public administration through a comparative textual analysis of the constitutions of the Fifth French Republic and the United States. Particular emphasis is placed on the exceptional powers of the presidents of the two countries, the influence of the executive power on the respective legislative processes, and the practical significance of the divided executive power in France compared to the formally unified American executive. These diverse comparisons are brought together by the theme of how the constitutional traditions in the two countries both promote and inhibit the capacity for action of the administrative state.

British and American Approaches to Public Service Ethics@@@Ethics in the British Civil Service@@@The Ethics of Public Service: Resolving Moral Dilemmas in Public Organizations

Preface Public Administration Ethics: Developing a Framework The Social and Historical Context of Public Administration The Organizational Context of Public Administration The Path to a More Ethical Public Administration: The Individual The Path to a More Ethical Public Administration: The Organization Ethics in Practice: An Application Bibliography Index

Public administration, executive power, and constitutional confusion

This article examines the ambiguity in the meaning of executive power in both the text of the U.S. Constitution and in subsequent judicial interpretations. This ambiguity has had a profound impact on the constitutional position of the public administration. In the recent independent counsel case, the U.S. Supreme Court offered a restrictive interpretation of the Presidents constitutional powers to remove subordinate officers. This new interpretation could lead to increased congressional control over administrative agencies. The proper place and function of the public administration, unfortunately for the public administration, have been and remain inherently ambiguous because of the longstanding confusion about executive power in the Constitution of the United States. Richard Neustadt captured this ambiguity nicely when he noted that the two great themes that have characterized the American presidency have been “clerkship” and “leadership.”(1) There is no easy formula to bring clerks and leaders together...

Working Group 1, Adapting Theories of Public Administration to the Emerging Role of Citizens

ROHR: We decided there are at least four models that guided our pleasant and somewhat meandering discussion. One was institutional/structural, the second was system design, the third was organizational learning, calling on Argyris in particular, and the fourth was values and ethics. We did not take up one model after the other in an orderly fashion. Rather, the models surfaced at the end of our discussion when we tried to reflect on what we had done. Early in our discussion we agreed on two points which might serve as our recommendations. They are: (1) Increased public participation in a given program or policy does not necessarily mean there has been increased citizen involvement. Public participation may simply be a legitimate expression of self-interest. This is not the sort of action that is distinctive of citizens. It does not necessarily order the polity or look to the common good. Resident aliens can also participate. (2) We should be cautious about overstating a long-lost golden age of citizenship in American history. There were moments ot widespread civic virtue, but some of the discussion at the conference may have gone too far in idealizing the past. Midway through our discussion Chairman Bill Dunn tried to impose some order on the chaos and offered the following summary of the central themes we were dealing with. One was that current theories of administration lead to an impoverished practice of citizenship. This is because administrative theories do not deal with system design. When systems are designed, they should amplify the variety of choices people can make. The system designer sees the public interest, but part of the public interest is that people should be able to pursue their personal interests. The theory group agreed that it was difficult to reach any kind of general conclusion because of the complexity of the subject matter. This comment is not as bland as it might seem, however, if one considers the following causes of the complexity. (1) Public administration and citizenship are rooted in two very different and perhaps antithetical traditions. One tradition centers on management and the other centers on personal initiative. There are serious problems in trying to put these two traditions together, although one need not despair of practical ad hoc arrangements that hold the two principles together in some kind of tension. (2) The high/ low distinction in citizenship was looked upon favorably, but certain difficulties were noted. One is that the question of who is high and who is low could become quite nasty. An important caveat must be that we do not equate low with bad. Low citizenship is self-interested, but a legitimate pursuit of self-interest needs no apology. Perhaps we should use active/passive or classical/modern to avoid any misunderstanding about high and low. Another difficulty is that the high/low distinction presumes that high is not for everyone. Just how restrictive the term might be was left unresolved, but we agreed we would not want to live in a nation with 200,000,000 high-ethical citizens. On the other hand, we surely would want to live in a nation with 200,000 or 2,000,000 such persons. A third difficulty is that the high/low distinction may be too stark and severe. Perhaps there should be a gradation within high and low. The gradation could be linked to various civic roles. One might be more active on a local issue, such as county roads, than on a national environmental policy issue, for example. Perhaps the chair would allow me at this point to ask some of my colleagues in the working group if they would care to amend or flatly contradict some of the points I have made.

Public administration and the constitutional bicentennial: An essay on research

The forthcoming centennial of American Public Administration falls in the same year as the bicentennial of the Constitution. This co-incidence suggests the propriety of examining the constitutional origins of the profession of Public Administration. This article notes the clash between the “two cultures” of administration and constitutionalism, proposes reasons for serious research into the constitutional foundations of contemporary administration, and provides several examples of suitable questions for this research.

The Poetry of the Constitution@@@Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution@@@To Run a Constitution: The Legitimacy of the Administrative State

For those who care about the Constitution, the prospect for its Bicentennial is dismaying. Instead of a time of refreshing admiration for what the Founders crafted, it will be turned into a tinsel storm of media glitz, rivaling the tawdry spectacle of the refurbishing of the Statue of Liberty. It is a national tragedy, for it trivializes an event of genius. Happily, however, some resist the tide. The University Press of Kansas continues to publish impressive books on the Founding that bode well to survive the Bicentennial with reputations enhanced. Among the most recent are John Rohrs To Run a Constitution and the final volume in Forrest McDonalds trilogy on the Founding, Novus Ordo Seclorum. 2 They are major books. Both authors write with felicity, deploy their formidable scholarship with easy grace and develop substantial arguments. While there are some differences between them, both agree on the genius of what occurred in Philadelphia in 1787. As McDonald wrote: