Prudential Public Leadership

Promoting Ethics in Public Policy and Administration

J. Uhr

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137506498
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book recovers Aristotle's understanding of the roles of rhetoric and prudence in public leadership, comparing it to the other major political theories of leadership: utilitarianism, as advocated by J.S. Mill, and duty-ethics, as advocated by Immanuel Kant.

CHAPTER 1

PREVIEW: POLITICAL THEORY AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

This book applies the political science of Aristotle (384–322 BC) to contemporary studies of public leadership. The aim is to use Aristotle’s classical Greek approach to leadership to reformulate the ethical responsibilities of public administrators who, under political direction, manage much of the bureaucracy of representative democracy. To recover Aristotle in the twentieth-first century means that we have to step back, initially to John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) whose utilitarian ethic tends to dominate contemporary theories of public leadership, and then to Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) whose nonutilitarian ethic provides the rights-based challenge to utilitarianism. Aristotle emerges as the classical supplement to these two versions of the ethic of modern liberalism, helping us to reshape the way public administrators think about their roles and responsibilities.

Prudential Public Leadership is not a conventional study in public administration. Public administration has its own distinctive intellectual history, and the discipline of administrative studies contains substantial research in social and political theory. Missing however is the history of political philosophy which makes up only a minor part, with some attention to Mill, less to Kant, and much less to Aristotle. This book reverses the priority, not with the hope of replacing Mill or Kant with Aristotle but with the hope that Aristotle’s surprisingly realistic political science can be used to help us today to see new things in the way we administer democratic governance and in the way we can look to public administrators as performing leadership roles of substantial (but frequently misunderstood) ethical importance.

The academic study of public administration is an important core study of modern politics and government. The field of public administration is at the center of studies of governance, even though contemporary approaches to governance tend to focus more on the policy process, which is managed by elected politicians, than on the administrative process, which is managed by nonelected administrators. The most influential scholars in public administration have tolerated extensive debate over distinctions between policy and administration, knowing that administrators generally have no mandate to determine public policy and are accountable to politicians in the legislative and political branches of government for the aims and impacts of their public administration. Often the study of public administration is the study of the bureaucratic process, reflecting the view that administrators are bureaucrats managing (and being managed by) “the bureaucracy.”

Two interesting implications about public leadership emerge when public administration is viewed in terms of bureaucracy. The standard implication is that administrators are technical specialists working in policy implementation under the direction of policy activists holding offices with legitimate public mandates in the political executive and the legislative branches of government. Technical expertise equips the bureaucracy with its valuable power to implement government programs with efficiency (minimizing outputs) and effectiveness (maximizing outcomes). In this view, government administrators are more like public managers than public leaders. Yet administrators contribute to public leadership by confining their leadership expertise to matters of technical detail which, like all matters of detail, is where the devil is likely to be found; hence, administrators perform important leadership work precisely because they help policy experts see and try to overcome the devil in the detail. But another implication can also emerge, holding the less reassuring view that the bureaucracy resembles a separate branch of government with its own mandate to authorize some types of programs as appropriate public policies and others, in whole or in part, as inappropriate public policies. There are many examples of this unconventional view. Some examples come from the right of politics with the aim of persuading us that the bureaucracy exercises a kind of invisible power in governance, where influential bureaucrats publicly profess to believe in distinctions between policy and administration but privately confess to substantial discretionary judgment over which types of policies are implemented with alacrity and which are deferred or delayed or even decimated. Other examples come from the political left with the aim of protecting bureaucratic rule as a rare form of due process with powerful substantive impacts about whose interests matter in public administration. In these examples, bureaucracy can promote something of a bureaucratic ethic into public administration and try to cultivate doctrines (and sometimes dogmas) about the public interest guarded by procedurally correct public administration.

These different perspectives on public administration reflect quite different political theories about democracy and bureaucracy, with significant disagreements about the type of public leadership to be expected of bureaucrats and the corresponding code of public ethics to be relied on by bureaucrats (Ruderman 1997; Kane and Patapan 2006). Advocates of big government tend to expect much of bureaucrats as leaders in government, with responsibilities extending beyond administration through their roles in managing important parts of the policy process and in delivering public programs. This type of public leadership has a public service ethic of political impartiality that not only prohibits public administrators from engaging in political behavior but also warns political actors against using administrators for improperly partisan purposes. The result can be to carve out a sphere of interest within government where bureaucrats enjoy a degree of policy as well as administrative independence, using their bureaucratic power to inject leadership into the policy as well as the administrative process. Not that everyone welcomes this big-government bureaucracy: advocates of small government see administrative leadership differently, with a dramatically different ethic of public service by bureaucrats committed to self-restraint and deference to the public leadership of small-government politicians in the legislative and political branches of government.

Contemporary democratic governance richly illustrates the checks and balances coming from these contending perspectives. The lack of conformity about the roles of the bureaucracy is matched by uncertainty about the types of public leadership properly expected of model bureaucrats and, even more disturbingly, the norms of public ethics expected of the bureaucracy in general. Steps toward conformity come from within democratic governance—notably by political executives intent on marshalling the bureaucracy—and from outside academic commentators. This book comes in the second category but from an author who has spent many years working with administrators and politicians exploring constructive ways they can cooperate, despite the skepticism many administrators and politicians have of any shared doctrine of democratic governance. This earthy skepticism is partly explained by the fitful character of philosophies of public administration conceived by the grand theorists of democratic governance. Some theories of public administration make for awful reading: their schemes of public leadership and of public service ethics are too loftily grand to be at all practical, and are also too narrowly instrumental to be genuinely theoretical. For students of political philosophy, works on the philosophy of public administration tend to be, shall we say, in a class of their own. Yet the themes of leadership and ethics are very near the core of democratic governance. Political leaders need to know how they can and should relate to public administrators, who can be treated either as junior colleagues or as janitors; citizens need to know what they can reasonably expect of the public leadership of administrators, over whom citizens have so little power or scrutiny; and administrators need to know the limits as well as the freedoms of their professional ethics as public officials. It is surprising that so little guidance comes from either the inner worlds of democratic governance or the outer world of academic commentary.

The classic sources in political philosophy exploring democracy and public administration are very few. This book opens up a fresh inquiry examining three theories of administrative ethics current in the professional world of public administration, drawn from Mill’s application of utilitarianism to democratic governance, from Kant’s reshaping of the ethic of liberalism along the lines of high-principled duty, and from Aristotle’s promotion of virtue ethics which remarkably lives on as friendly criticism of liberal-democratic ethics of public service. Contemporary theories of public administrative ethics tend to blend these three schools of public ethics into an adjustable assembly of options for public leadership, with administrators working out roles in democratic governance consistent with their favored adjustments of administrative ethics adapted from the richly elaborate originals presented by these three theorists of leadership schemes suitable for democratic government. Democracy is, of course, rule by the people, and liberal-democratic rule includes popular choice of political leaders. Public administration emerges in the space between the people and their chosen political representatives, with democratic constitutions making space for systems of public administration as mediators between politicians and the people—mediators trusted to use their administrative powers to protect the public interest.

Perhaps the most influential classical authority on public administration is Mill’s Considerations on Representative Government, published in the same year as his Utilitarianism that occupies our main focus in this book as we tease out his concepts of ethical public leadership. Mill’s Considerations contains a formative account of the civil service as the core of properly representative public administration. In Chapter 14 on “the executive,” Mill defends the formal authority of politicians, but this is conditional on their reliance on “professional advisers” who also should have a degree of formal authority so that they do not fall into being simply “ciphers.” Speaking of “the highest class of administrative business,” Mill notes that the qualifications of the leading civil servants “are generally of much more importance to the public than those of the minister himself.” Qualifications here refer to ethical as well as technical skills: Mill speaks of the “experience and traditions” of those in “the public service” who “do not change with changes in politics.” The reach across technical qualifications toward the wider and deeper liberal arts is evident in Mill’s identification of the type of official misconduct which officials should fear: “conduct implying untrustworthiness for the purposes for which their trust is given them” (Mill 1984, 360–376). Administrative leadership is an important form of public leadership held together wherever possible by the distinctive ethics of office shared by administrators, who are neither “the people” nor “the politicians” but mediators or facilitators between these two powers. Of course, not every consideration about public administration is contained in Mill’s Considerations; for example, the nature of the liberal arts required for public leadership is more extensively examined in Mill’s book-length “Inaugural Address” of 1867 (Mill 1965, 353–410; Strauss 1968, 17–20).

For our purposes, of more immediate relevance is Mill’s Utilitarianism which, as we see in detail in chapter 5, is an extended essay on how the liberal arts can build leadership in government capable of satisfying the democratic demands of public trust (Mill 1991, 129–201). But Mill’s value to the study and practice of public leadership is evident in high praise of Aristotle and the premodern and prescientific “wisdom of life” found in classical philosophy which Mill defends in the “Inaugural Address” (Mill 1965). The three works of Aristotle praised by Mill are exactly those we will examine in this book: “the Rhetoric, Ethics and Politics of Aristotle.” Mill insists: “No modern writings come near” to Aristotle’s theory of “the dialectic of the ancients” which retain its value as we learn from the ancients how to lay “an admirable foundation for ethical and philosophical culture.” Ancient models of ethics and politics might appear remote and distant, but their “perfect models” help us as we shape our public rhetoric to lead and influence the “busy and imperfectly prepared public” in modern democracy. Aristotle’s three works are a core of the classical tradition which “show us at least what excellence is, and make us desire it, and strive to get us near to it as is within our reach” (Mill 1965, 370–374). As we will see, Mill’s utilitarian mode of public leadership is not at all identical to Aristotle’s mode of leadership based on virtue; yet there remain elements of Aristotle’s orientation to ethics and politics in Mill’s political thinking, including his cultivation of administrative leadership schooled in the liberal arts. But before we explore the political philosophy of public leadership, we need to pay closer attention to current orthodoxies of public administration through which we can later move on to learn more about the neglected foundations of public leadership in political philosophy (Ruderman 1997; Dobel 1998).

Academic Leadership

Contemporary schools of public policy and administration have few outstanding authorities in the political philosophy of public service. Mill’s influence is generally acknowledged but his arresting analytical rhetoric is often replaced by conventional wisdom about the manageable routines of democratic governance. Yet in my experience, two unusual voices stand out as mentors. I follow the lead of two scholars of public administration who provided the pathway to the recovery of classical political theory expounded in the pages below. Neither scholar pretended to be a political philosopher, yet both were driven by a respect for political philosophy and could see the need for philosophy to become part of the public life of contemporary democratic governance. Both scholars articulated a distinctive political theory associated with public administration—the source of the professional ethics animating public administrators and the generator of the rare type of public leadership held by exemplary administrators in modern systems of democratic governance. Their names will not be known to many students of democratic politics or political theory, except for those who pay close attention to theories and practices in US government. My two academic sources of authority are: Herbert J. Storing (1928–1977) of the University of Chicago and John Rohr (1934–2011) of Virginia Polytechnic Institute, both of whom were outstanding analysts of the constitutional architecture of the United States as a pioneering model of modernity in government and public administration. Storing directed Rohr’s doctoral studies in political science at the University of Chicago. Both wrote books on non-US practices of government: Storing, for example, co-wrote a book on European agricultural policy with Peter Self (a great administrative theorist who was also one of my mentors at the Australian National University), and Rohr (with whom I enjoyed a close professional relationship) wrote a book on the “constitutional governance” of France and the United States. Both, however, contributed many articles and chapters to prudential public leadership (Uhr 2014a).

A good example of Storing’s work on public administrative theory is his essay collection: Toward a More Perfect Union (Storing 1995). The final essay on “The Achievement of Leo Strauss” links to Storing’s edited book Essays on the Scientific Study of Politics which includes his chapter on “The Science of Administration,” as well as Strauss’s “An Epilogue,” with its contrast between conventional mainstream of social science and the dissenting world of political philosophy (Storing 1962; Pangle 2006, 114–117). Also of note here is Rohr’s coauthored article on “‘the contributions of Herbert J Storing” examining Storing’s idea of “closet statesmanship” as an important way of clarifying the role of public administration in democratic governance, featuring prudential judgment as the best term to describe the core function of public administrators (Morgan et al. 2010). The term “closet statesmanship” captures two elements of this type of prudential judgment: that it is in substance an example of statesmanship supplementing the more obvious statesmanship of politicians, and that it is in appearance often hidden within a closet, invisible to many politicians as well as the people, precisely because it is a necessary but unwelcome element of democratic political regime.

Ethical leadership is a central theme here. Storing’s impact on Rohr is evident in the “Foreword” he wrote for Rohr’s Ethics for Bureaucrats (Rohr 1978). Rohr’s “Preface” repays Storing’s kindness with his gratitude for his “dear friend and mentor” who died as the book was going to press. Rohr noted Storing’s influence as a teacher who had teased out the normative implications of the demise of the traditional dichotomy of politics and administration with “Storing’s sound but troubling observation” that “the civil servant has least understanding of his own doings when he is exercising his highest responsibilities” (Rohr 1978, vii–viii). Note that Rohr here refers to the demise of the traditional dichotomy, implying that Storing was an opponent of that tradition. Storing’s opposition is made more interesting by the report of his observation that the bureaucracy tends not really to understand what it is doing, even when exercising those high responsibilities. The implication is that Storing sensed that leading administrators paid insufficient attention to the principles informing their highest public responsibilities. This sense is what this present book is about: what are the principles of ethics relevant to the democratic leadership exercised by public administrators?

The gist of the answer emerges in the few pages where Storing and Rohr share their scholarship. Storing’s “Foreword” says that Rohr’s innovative book on ethics for bureaucrats examined the “regime values” of the US constitutional regime, meaning more precisely “the values or ends or goods that the American political system is designed to secure” (Rohr 1978, v–vi). This is a fascinating description of the nature of a political regime. The account of the regime does not highlight the black letter of the constitution or proper activity of the core institutions of government authorized by the constitution. Storing’s brief account refers to “the values or ends or goods” that the institutions of government are meant to secure, which might well include constitutionalism but can reach well beyond that foundational value. This book follows that lead in examining “the values or ends or goods” in the formative schools of ethics and leadership shaping contemporary public administration.

Leadership Ethics

In contemporary studies of policy and administration, the term “leadership ethics” refers to the behavior and standards of conduct used by leaders to do their leadership job (Ciulla 2004a; Ciulla, Price, and Murphy 2005). The term here relates to public leaders in democratic systems of governance. The focus is on their public ethics: the standards required to do their job as public officials, as distinct from the ethics used in their private lives. Public ethics is usually associated with accepted agreements or “the rules of the game” about appropriate standards expected in particular public roles. Although public ethics is more about practices than beliefs or opinions, many leadership practices do involve “things said” as important practical examples of “things done.” Ethics is very much a matter of practice: a matter of what leaders do or what they refuse to do in their practice, including what they say or refuse to say explaining their practices.

Theory is important because the appropriate standards of ethics are matters of theoretical debate (Grint 2010, 35–45; Keohane 2010, 18–47). Leaders exercise discretion, including discretion over which standards apply in specific circumstances. Ethics can be about the strict application of universal rules: for example, when the rules “rule out” illegal or corrupt conduct. But ethics can also be about “making the right judgment” when competing responsibilities clash: for example, when leaders have to balance conflicting demands from colleagues and clients. Which theory, then, is relevant to leadership ethics for public officials? Some will answer with political theories about public roles in democratic governance; others will answer with theories of ethics about “doing the right thing” more generally. There are many theories of leadership but the theories most relevant to this study of leadership e...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1.   Preview: Political Theory and Public Administration
• 2.   Leadership Rhetoric: Defining the Terms
• 3.   Prudential Leadership: The Power of Practical Reason
• 4.   Leadership Dilemmas: Debating Dirty Hands
• 5.   Pragmatism: Mill and the Ethics of Impact
• 6.   Principle: Kant and the Ethics of Intent
• 7.   Prudence: Aristotle and the Ethics of Virtue
• 8.   Leadership Accountability: Democracy and Deliberation
• 9.   Review: Ethics and Leadership in Public Administration
• References
• Index