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Enforcement or Ethical Capacity: Considering the Role of State Ethics Commissions at the Millennium
Author(s) -
Smith Robert W.
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
public administration review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.721
H-Index - 139
eISSN - 1540-6210
pISSN - 0033-3352
DOI - 10.1111/1540-6210.00290
Subject(s) - bureaucracy , state (computer science) , government (linguistics) , law , language change , public administration , political science , enforcement , politics , information ethics , research ethics , applied ethics , law enforcement , criminal justice ethics , sociology , engineering ethics , criminal justice , engineering , art , linguistics , philosophy , literature , algorithm , computer science , theory of criminal justice
Looking back on the twentieth century, the American public has witnessed numerous incidents of unethical behavior by a variety of federal, state, and local government officials. Ongoing cases of political and bureaucratic corruption raise questions about what governments are doing to prevent these “ethical lapses.” Most state governments have comprehensive ethics laws and ethics commissions to enforce these laws. Very few studies have examined the role of ethics commissions in state government. This article stems from research conducted during 1997–98 involving more than 60 anonymous interviews with ethics officials and stakeholders in Connecticut, Florida, and New York. This analysis reveals that ethics commissions are instruments and symbols, policemen and consultants, politicians and neutral technicians, and interpreters of and prisoners to the ethics laws. The article concludes with 10 recommendations to improve ethics enforcement and the ethics‐building capacity of state governments as society enters the next millennium.