by
Steven Cohen and William B. Eimicke, School of International and Public Affairs
Columbia University
Draft: February 19, 1998 I. Views of Ethics in Public Administration
As the twentieth century comes to a close, ethics is returning to the public sector reform agenda. Just as it was at the turn of this century the current focus is on the administrative branch of government. Then, as now, scandals involving elected officials prompted the reform initiatives. However, today there is far less consensus on the most appropriate elements of the reform agenda, perhaps reflecting a century of less than successful ethically-driven reforms.
This paper provides a broad overview of what we see as five distinct eras of ethics reform in this century and a current debate which may well emerge as the initial reform agenda of the new millennium. The first era lasted from the late nineteenth century until the early 1970's and we have termed The Reform Era. This is the period where we attempted to separate politics from administration and established a professionalized public service. The second era reflected the great social, political and cultural changes that began in the 1960's and stimulated the establishment of the New Public Administration, the name we have assigned to the second era of ethics reform. This period was characterized by a move toward greater individual responsibility by career civil servants. In the late 1980's, the pendulum swung back as public administration scholars rediscovered the ethical principals of the Reform Era. This period contends with the problem of maintaining a positive view of government in an anti-government era. We have termed this third period one of Reconstruction, as the field attempts to make the classic ideals of progressive public administration relevant once again. The Reconstruction Era might still be underway today were it not for the profound challenge to traditional public administration launched by the 1992 publication of David Osborne and Theodore Gaebler's Reinventing Government. Some public administration scholars perceived this book's advocacy of enterprising government was perceived by some public administration scholars as a challenge to the values and ethics of neutral public administration. We have termed the fourth period from 1992 to 1997 as the Reinvention Era. The fifth era of public ethics scholarship is now underway and we have borrowed the title of George Fredrickson's most recent work to label the contemporary era: Spiritualism.