Book Reviews | City Ethics

August 13, 2011

Ethics in Congress V - Constituent Service (Summer Reading)

Constituent service is a basic legislative role that I have pretty much ignored in my blog (click here to read the principal exception). Government ethics focuses too much on votes and self-serving conduct, and too little on the ways in which council members and other government officials help their constituents in special or inappropriate ways. Constituent service is central to Dennis F.

Ethics Codes & Reform August 10, 2011

Ethics in Congress II - The Principles of Legislative Ethics and the Appearance Standard

Ethics Codes & Reform August 10, 2011

Ethics in Congress I - Institutional Corruption (Summer Reading)

My second volume of summer reading is a classic, Dennis F. Thompson's Ethics in Congress: From Individual to Institutional Corruption (1995). Despite the book's title, Thompson (a professor at Harvard) has a great deal to say about government ethics that is equally applicable to city and county legislators.

July 26, 2011

Being Wrong I (Summer Reading)

Resources & Learning May 26, 2011

Giving Voice to Values II

This is the second half of my look at Mary C. Gentile's 2010 book, Giving Voice to Values.

Naming and Framing

Resources & Learning May 25, 2011

Giving Voice to Values I

The failure to deal responsibly with conflicts of interest has many causes, but the principal cause is the silence of those who are not directly responsible. I've written several times about some of the reasons for this silence: fear, justifications, lack of moral courage, and a lack of a feeling of professional obligation.

Resources & Learning May 12, 2011

The Jersey Sting

Two months ago, a book was published called The Jersey Sting, by two Star-Ledger reporters, Ted Sherman and Josh Margolin.

Resources & Learning April 11, 2011

Blind Spots VIII — How to Handle Our Blind Spots

Max H. Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel, the authors of the new book Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What's Right and What to Do about It (Princeton University Press), present several ways of dealing with the many problems they raise in their book.

Resources & Learning April 10, 2011

Blind Spots VII — Indirect Blindness and Moral Compensation

I've noted on several occasions that indirect conflicts are among the most problematic areas in government ethics. Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What's Right and What to Do about It, a new book by Max H. Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel (Princeton University Press), looks into some of the psychological aspects of the indirectness problem.

Resources & Learning April 9, 2011

Blind Spots VI — Psychological Cleansing and Obfuscation

The denial of unethical behavior, which usually occurs long after the behavior itself, is usually the worst part of an ethics scandal, the adding of insult to injury. The public is faced with two possibilities when an official denies that he did something unethical. This dilemma is well described in Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What's Right and What to Do about It, a new book by Max H. Bazerman and Ann E.

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