Book Reviews

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I don't know how I failed to hear about this novel. Maybe I'm the last
one on the block to do so, but it's been four years since <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=mnIjPwAACAAJ&dq=parker+jefferson+falle…; target="”_blank”">T.
Jefferson Parker's <i>The Fallen</i></a> was published. This detective novel
involves the murder of an investigator for San Diego's "Ethics

In the October 28 issue of the <i>New York Review of Books</i>, there is <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/oct/28/moral-brink/&quot; target="”_blank”">an
essa</a>y by the excellent South African novelist J. M. Coetzee on

Meredith McGehee wrote<a href="http://www.clcblog.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=399…;
a thought-provoking Campaign Legal Center blog post yesterday</a> about
the upside of election time ethics attacks on opponents.<br>
<br>
"Current political thinking generally laments this development, arguing

Two years ago, I wrote <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/node/569&quot; target="”_blank”">a
blog post</a> about a book by Lewis Hyde entitled <i>The Gift</i>, which had a
lot to say, philosophically, about gift-giving and -receiving, an issue
of relevance to government ethics. I just

In order to develop their identities, and cement the loyalties of their members, organizations tend to contrast themselves with other organizations, and with those they deal with, whether they are clients, customers, or citizens. Bailey wrote, “If contact with outsiders is experienced as painful and involves rejection, organizational solidarity is likely to be enhanced." In other words, in the local government context, seeing citizens as irritants creates solidarity.<br>
<br>

One of the problems in talking about conflicts of interest is that we
tend to assume that people with conflicts analyze their situations
before acting. We think that, for example, they balance acting in their
personal interest, or in the interest of a family member or business
associate, against the consequences of getting caught. Or we think that
the principal ethical considerations they bring to bear on their
situation arise from their local code of ethics or their spiritual or
philosophical beliefs.<br>
<br>

Bailey has a word for putting the organization ahead of the individual:  holism (as opposed to individualism). What
complicates this concept in government is that there are two wholes,
the organization itself and the community it works for. One of the
things that most determines a local government's ethical environment is
which of the two wholes an official or employee is most supposed to put
above his or her personal interest.<br>
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This is a follow-up to yesterday's blog post on ethics fines. This
week, I've been reading Karen
Pryor's bible on positive training, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Shoot-Dog-Teaching-Training/dp/1860542387/re…; target="”_blank”"><i>Don't Shoot the Dog: The New Art of
Teaching and Training</i></a> (Bantam, 1999).<br>
<br>

This is the eighth and last in a series of blog posts inspired by reading Susan Neiman’s book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Clarity-Grown-Up-Idealists-Revised/dp/06911…; target="”_blank”"><i>Moral
Clarity:
A

This is the seventh in a series of blog posts inspired by reading Susan Neiman’s book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Clarity-Grown-Up-Idealists-Revised/dp/06911…; target="”_blank”"><i>Moral
Clarity:
A
Guide for Grown-Up Idealists</i></a> (Princeton, 2008). Neiman’s discussion of Daniel Ellsberg, the government official who let us know