Ethics and the public interest
| Published date | 01 September 2012 |
| Date | 01 September 2012 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0144739412463221 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Teaching Public Administration
Ethics and the public
30(2) 115–123
ª The Author(s) 2012
interest: A question of
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DOI: 10.1177/0144739412463221
morality
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Howard Elcock Professor (emeritus)
Northumbria University
Abstract
Since 1979, under governments of both major parties, the thrust of British public policy
has been radically changed in the direction of neoliberal economics and the ‘New Public
Management’ (NPM). This has had profound effects on the priorities that politicians and
the officials who advise them are expected to pursue. The traditional public service
values of equity, probity and integrity have been displaced by the business values of
economy, efficiency and effectiveness – the ‘Three Es’ (Hood, 1991). Many of the
provisions and regulations that were designed to reduce risks of corrupt or otherwise
improper behaviour were relaxed in favour of generating more entrepreneurial attitudes
among public servants and recruiting entrepreneurial talent from the business world.
The benefits of enterprise have been significant in terms of gains in innovation, efficiency
and improved relations with the public; but on the other hand, corrupt, selfish and
greedy behaviour by some politicians and public servants has seriously eroded public
respect for politics and public administration alike. More generally, markets and their
values have increasingly dominated political, economic and social discourses and decision
making, with the result that markets are now used to determine outcomes that would
formerly have been regarded as inappropriate for the application of market methods and
which arguably are still inappropriate issues for markets alone to determine (Sandel,
2012). Hence a review of the ethical issues that underpin public policymaking, admin-
istration and management is urgently required. Michael Sandel (2010) has argued that we
need to rethink the importance of justice and related values in our public life, albeit that
we disagree among ourselves about many moral and religious issues: ‘A politics of moral
engagement is not only a more inspiring ideal than a politics of avoidance. It is also a more
promising basis for a just society’ (Sandel, 2010: 269).
Keywords
administration, conflict, discipline, ethics, policy
Corresponding author:
Howard Elcock, Northumbria University Ellison Place, Tyne and Wear Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE1 8ST United
Kingdom. e-mail: howardelcock@talktalk.net
116
Teaching Public Administration 30(2)
Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel and the resultant film Never Let Me Go, which pictures the lives
and deaths of cloned children who have been bred to become organ donors for the rest of
society, raises acute ethical issues which are very relevant to today’s society and politics.
It is disturbing; perhaps nothing like this could happen today, yet medical advances have
brought us close to making it a realistic possibility. The core issue raised by the film is
whether calculating the benefits of an action, subtracting the disadvantages or problems
it presents and proceeding with it if the resultant sum is positive, is not on its own a
sufficient moral justification for proceeding with the action. In this case the benefits
included the general population living to 120 years in good health as a result of
breakthroughs in transplant surgery, at the cost of breeding young people destined to
become the providers of organs for transplant surgery – their ‘donations’. Their less than
human status is indicated at several points, for instance by Ruth’s declaration that ‘We
were all modelled on trash’ and in other ways – ‘Hailsham students are special’, the Head
Guardian tells them when forbidding them from smoking. When Tommy and Kathy visit
their retired Head Guardian to enquire about the possibility of deferring their donations,
she tells them that she collected their artwork ‘not to look into your souls but to prove
that you have souls at all’. If they have souls, they should be treated as fully human and
hence their enforced sacrifice to the transplant surgeons is immoral because they are
human and should be treated as such. Her companions remark on their way out, ‘you
poor things’ – demonstrates her recognition of the wrong that has been done to them.
Even if this method has not been adopted and may well never be, there are plenty of
other examples around, especially in this era of marketising everything, of morally
repugnant decisions being made on the basis of cost and benefit calculations (Sandel,
2012). Hence the Felicific Calculus and its like do not by themselves provide adequate
bases for resolving moral dilemmas.
Rival bases for moral decisions and judgements
Moral philosophers generally advance one or both of two bases on which to make moral
judgements and ethical decisions. They are first Utilitarian ethics – ‘Playing the con-
sequences game’ (G E Moore, 1902) – estimating or calculating the benefits to be gained
from a decision or action and subtracting the disadvantages. If the resultant balance is
positive, then the action is justified, in accordance with Bentham’s Felicific Calculus.
The procedures presented here are justified on the basis of the gain to the majority, but
this may unfairly damage the interests of minorities or damage the moral basis of the
society as a whole.
Hence we need the second approach: making decisions in the light of an ideal or set of
ideals. These might be religious prescriptions, for example the Ten Commandments,
especially the last six which concern human beings’ personal and social relationships; or
the two great Commandments of Jesus Christ, the second of which is ‘Love they
neighbour as thyself’, further...
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