Book Reviews

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 <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Blind-Spots-Whats-Right-about/dp/0691147507&quot; target="”_blank”">Blind
Spots:
Why
We
Fail
to

Government ethics involves itself primarily with the formal norms set
forth in ethics codes. But as the authors of the new book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Blind-Spots-Whats-Right-about/dp/0691147507&quot; target="”_blank”">Blind
Spots:
Why
We
Fail
to
Do
What's
Right
and
What to Do about It</a> (Princeton University
Press), point out, "It is through informal mechanisms that

"Most of us dramatically
underestimate the degree to which our behavior is affected by
incentives and other situational factors." This is one of the most
important sentences in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Blind-Spots-Whats-Right-about/dp/0691147507&quot; target="”_blank”">Blind
Spots:
Why
We
Fail
to
Do
What's Right and What to Do about It</a>, a new book by

Although it is not a book about government ethics, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Blind-Spots-Whats-Right-about/dp/0691147507&quot; target="”_blank”">Blind
Spots:
Why
We
Fail
to Do What's Right and What to Do about It</a> by
Max H. Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel (Princeton University Press) is
a must-read book for government ethics practitioners. This new book (it

Violence happens. The world is violent. People are naturally violent.
This is what people say.<br>
<br>
Politicians are all crooks. Government ethics is an oxymoron. Don't be
so naïve. This is what people say.<br>
<br>

In his book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Search-Nonviolent-Future-Ourselves-Families/dp/19…; target="”_blank”">The
Search
for
a
Nonviolent
Future</a>, Michael N. Nagler talks about two models for looking at
violence that are also relevant to government ethics, the medical model and the educational model.<br>
<br>

Another way in which violence and unethical conduct are similar is the
way they are handled by the news media. Just as violence is generally
discussed
in terms of separate
battles and wars, day by day, unethical conduct is discussed in terms
of separate
scandals and individuals, day by day. And unethical conduct is
responded to in the worst possible atmosphere.<br>
<br>
What this does is prevent an awareness of the problem of
unethical conduct in general and what constitutes a poor ethics
environment. In

Despite the title of his essay "What Chance of Ethics in the Globalized
World of Consumers?" <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zygmunt_Bauman&quot; target="”_blank”">Zygmunt Bauman</a>
has some valuable things to say that are relevant to government ethics

I've written before about some of the problems relating to the Hatch
Act's prohibition of local government employees running for office if

Sometimes concepts derived from one area of study, for one purpose, can
be valuable in another area of study, for another purpose. This is true
of the concepts of "injunctive norm" and "descriptive norm" derived by social psychology professor Robert Cialdini of Arizona State University for
use in the area of persuading people not to do certain things, such as litter.<br>
<br>