Friday, 21 August 2015

Evolution of Ethical Considerations in Public Administration.

Evolution of Ethical Considerations in Public Administration.

Public Administration in the earliest decades avoided problems of morality or ethics (Waldo, 1074). However, since the late 1960s, considerations of morality or ethics have been creeping into the public administration literature particularly the “new” public administration literature (Marini, 1971). There are many reasons for this development. First, is the recognition of the fact that a policy matter is inevitable a matter of
public morality, and that most policy matters pose problems in private morality as well.
In another development, with the tremendous expansion of the public policy arena, two major problems with significant ethical dimensions emerge:
1.    With the increase in the scope and depth of governmental activity, the decision making process has become more complex. Hence, public administrators have increasingly encountered difficulty in making appropriate choices, particularly, appropriate ethical choices
2.   Another problem is that the more the expansion of governmental activity, the more public policy has shifted from the direct control of the people, elected representatives and the law. The bureaucrats become very powerful. The question then arises in a system where non elected officials possess increasing amounts of power and authority, how do we ensure that these make rational and morally responsible judgments?
Furthermore, the development of ethical considerations in public administration was due to the abandonment of the politics/administration dichotomy or facts-value dichotomy. Under positivism facts-value dichotomy, only technical decisions about the instrumental relationship of means to ends lends themselves to the rules of rational assessment. Value judgments, as decisions about which ends or goals to choose, are considered beyond the reach of scientific methodology and therefore, must be relegated to philosophy and metaphics (Fischer, 1983). It is worthy of note that facts-value separation is traced to the man known for his antique of bureaucratic rationality, Max Weber. Weber mutually developed the facts value dichotomy as a guard against technocratic encroachment (Simey, 1968). Troubled about the increasing power of bureaucracy under Bismarck, Weber contended that values were too important to be left in the hands of the technocracy. Dichotomy between empirical and normative discourse and facts-value were necessary to check the increasing power of the bureaucracy. With the abandonment of facts-values or politics/administration dichotomy and the recognition of politics and administration interaction, there is an implicit recognition of the relevance of ethics in public administration. It becomes imperative for the public administrator to make decisions not only on the traditional bases of efficiency, economy, and administrative principles, but on the more agonizing criteria of morality as well. The issue of public interest has, therefore, become paramount in public policy making.

In Nigeria, ethical considerations emerged, with the entrapment of civilian democracy in 1979. This became necessary because of increased corruption among the ruling class, and the bureaucrats. Such agencies like Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) established in 2002, code of conduct Bureal, Public Complaints Commission, incorporated in the 1990 Laws of the Federation, Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related offences Commission (ICPC) in 2000 and Budget Monitoring and Price Intelligence Unit (BMPIU) in 2001, are institutional mechanisms put in place by Nigerian government for enforcing ethical behavior in Nigeria Public Administration.

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