A commitment to social equity is often thought to require that administrators engage in explicit forms of direct policy advocacy but the inter-organizational, cross-sector networks that characterize 21st-century administration offer many opportunities to advance social equity by ensuring procedural fairness. Focusing on key aspects of collaborative governance reveals such opportunities as they emerge in the selection, recruitment, and retention of stakeholders; in facilitating the deliberations and work of collaboratives, and ensuring accountability within the network of partners.
Abstract A crumbling social order where violence and cruelty spring from fear is the predominant dystopian condition. The emergence of intolerant religious movements in response, movements that promise deliverance but bring new forms of authoritarian rule, is also a staple of the dystopian novel. What is rare is to imagine an alternative religious response to fear and alienation. This is perhaps the most important achievement of Octavia Butler's Parable series and one that is often overlooked. Butler's Earthseed is neither a comforting palliative for pain and uncertainty nor a political tool to manufacture workable consensus. Rather, it is a coherent, nondogmatic belief system that reflects many of the essential assumptions and tenets of alternative understandings of Christianity as outlined by writers and theologians such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Marcus Borg, Elaine Pagels, and Parker Palmer.
On April 25, 2009, the College of Charleston and the Charleston community lost a beloved teacher, mentor, scholar, and colleague, William V. Moore, distinguished professor of political science.
Social contract theorists of the 17th and 18th centuries provide diverse accounts of human nature and the social processes that shape conflict, cooperation, and compliance. These ideas are applied to the challenges of contemporary public administration, specifically; the effort that often underlies both the search for public administration's identity and professionalization more generally: the effort to build consensus on shared values and ideals and ensure ethical practice with a minimum of external policing. A consideration of social contract theory yields a heavy dose of realism when it comes to this objective but invites neither despondency nor complacency.
Insofar as they can trigger existing accountability mechanisms that otherwise might not have uncovered or pursued administrative wrongdoing, whistleblowers can promote a more responsible public service. It would be both unwise and unfair, however, to rely on whistleblowers as a primary means by which to shore up a flawed system of bureaucratic accountability. The costs to the whistleblower and to the organization are substantial, and whistleblowing may reinforce one of the most significant shortcomings of existing mechanisms of accountability: the preoccupation with uncovering past misdeeds and the inability to promote the kind of ethical sensitivity and reflection necessary to reduce the incidence of organizational wrongdoing. When whistleblowers trigger external review, demands for accountability are as likely to promote rigidity and rationalization as they are to promote greater sensitivity to future ethical issues. These limitations on whistleblowing, and on after-the-fact review of administrative decision making more generally, should not be used to disparage accountability in favor of "high road" strategies like professional education. Instead, they demonstrate the importance of developing alternative means of accountability that do more than assign blame for the worst abuses of the public trust. Designing accountability mechanisms that require before-the-fact review of administrative decision making offers the possibility of ensuring compliance with external standards in a way that supports the critical reflection and ethical sensitivity that are vital to a responsible public service.
The dominant approaches to administrative responsibility have been preoccupied with defining, mobilizing, and rehabilitating an intelligible and reliable "public, " one that provides an unambiguous source of guidance and an unimpeachable defense against critics of discretionary authority. This emphasis on building moral consensus on public purposes overestimates the ability of political scientists and public administrators to effect fundamental social change. A more realistic and practical approach to administrative responsibility acknowledges that the public is often divided and inattentive and that political institutions are often incapable of articulating unambiguous policy directives. Under these circumstances, the ability of individual administrators to assess conflicting demands and claims on their loyalty ought to be the primary focus of a viable account of administrative responsibility. The ideal of individual moral autonomy best captures the strengths of character required for this kind of responsible administrative decision making.
