Summer Reading: The Righteous Mind VI: Fairness and Moral Disgust
Moral Disgust
Book Reviews
July 13, 2012
Summer Reading: The Righteous Mind V: Relationships in a WEIRD Culture
You may not have realized it, but if you are reading this, you are
most likely WEIRD, that is, a member of a culture that is Western,
educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic.
Resources & Learning
July 12, 2012
Summer Reading: The Righteous Mind IV: Accountability
One section of Haidt's book The
Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and
Religion (Pantheon, 2012) is entitled "We Are All Intuitive
Politicians." The section begins with a recognition of the
centrality of accountability not just in government, but in all our
relations with people. "Human beings," he says, "are the world
champions of cooperation beyond kinship, and we do it in large part
by creating systems of formal and informal accountability.
Resources & Learning
July 11, 2012
Summer Reading: The Righteous Mind III: The Social Nature of Moral Judgment
The Ethics of Gut Reactions
Resources & Learning
July 10, 2012
Summer Reading: The Righteous Mind II - Individualistic vs. Sociocentric Societies
In his book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (Pantheon, 2012), Jonathan Haidt identifies one of the biggest obstacles to government ethics in the U.S.: the fact that we have an individualistic society, placing individuals at the center, rather than the more common sociocentric society, which subordinates the needs of individuals to the needs of groups and institutions.
July 9, 2012
Summer Reading: The Righteous Mind I
Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (Pantheon, 2012) is a book that does not, from its title, appear to have much value for government ethics. But Haidt's approach to morality, and his look at how people approach morality, provides a lot of food for thought about government ethics, enough to fill nine blog posts.
Moral Systems
June 9, 2012
Summer Reading: Judith Shklar's "The Faces of Injustice"
I recently read Judith N. Shklar's book The Faces of Injustice (Yale U.P., 1990). This excellent essay
about the difference between misfortune and injustice would not
appear to have much to do with government ethics. But there turns
out to be much relevant food for thought.
Conflicts of Interest
April 25, 2012
Theories of a Legislator's Role That Lie Beneath Definitions of Corruption
University of Maryland Law School professor Deborah Hellman recently
put the draft of her law review article, "Defining
Corruption and Constitutionalizing Democracy" (forth. Mich. L.
Rev (Vol. 111)), on SSRN. The core argument of her paper is that
defining legislative corruption requires a theory of the
legislator's role in a democracy. Hellman sets out three such
theories, and I add a fourth.
Resources & Learning
April 18, 2012
Spring Reading: Corrupt Cities
Corrupt Cities: A Practical Guide to Cure and Prevention, a book by Robert Klitgaard, Ronald Maclean-Abaroa, and H. Lindsey Parris (Institute for Contemporary Studies, 2000), is an excellent study and analysis of municipal anti-corruption efforts primarily outside of the United States. Much of what the authors recommend is of use in the U.S., as well.
March 5, 2012
Carlos Fuentes on Government Ethics
The great Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes' 2006 novel, The Eagle's
Throne, translated from the Spanish by Kristina Cordero, is one of
the best political novels I've ever read. I highly recommend it. The
novel also happens to contain some great quotes that touch on
government ethics. The government may be Mexico's, and national
rather than local, but that won't get in the way of enjoying these
wonderful quotations, which you'll find by clicking on the post title or book cover.