Conflicts of interest are generally not seen to apply to local party
committees. There are almost never limitations on membership or voting on such
committees by local government employees, contractors, developers,
grantees, or others seeking financial benefits from the government.
Robert E. Goodin's book Manipulatory
Politics (Yale Univ. Press, 1980) is valuable for its
"cataloguing [of] various modes of political manipulation," as the
author wrote in his Preface. Goodin found only a few of the cases
"ethically worrisome," but the fact that I disagree does not make
the catalog any less valuable.
Definitions
Goodin's definition of "manipulation" is "power...
David A. Marcello, the Executive Director of the Public Law Center
at Tulane University Law School in New Orleans, has been keeping
close tabs on New Orleans' troubled ethics program. In 2011, he
published a report on how Hurricane Katrina (2005) led New
Orleans' officials to turn a moribund ethics program into one...
Long ago, experts in philosophy, physics, and psychology recognized that reality and perception are not as different as people used to think. And yet people continue to think it. One area where they continue to think it is government ethics.
Last month, Jonathan Rauch published a sincere and well-written defense of political machines, entitled "Political Realism: How Hacks, Machines, Big Money, and Back-Room Deals Can Strengthen American Democracy" (Brooking Institution Press; available free as a PDF or e-book). Although the essay scarcely mentions conflicts of interest, gifts, nepotism, and the like, and it makes no mention at all of conflicts of...