parency. We have argued that public administration is a fundamentally moral enterprise and that the public administrator is a moral agent (Garofalo and Geuras 2006). In this context, public administrators have multiple principals whose interests and priorities are multiple as well. The public administrator’s central principal, however, is morality itself, the principal that is foundational to the legitimacy of public administration. Ultimately, public administration serves societal values, and concerns the justification of the ends and means by which those values are enacted. This is the basis of public administration’s claim to moral legitimacy in governance.
We also have argued that moral legitimacy is not enough for effective public service leadership (Garofalo and Geuras 2005). It must be accompanied by moral competence, a key dimension of the professional skills required by good governance. Drawing from both Kenneth Winston’s (2003, 169–87) analysis and our own unified ethic, we maintain that the “[i]ndividual and institutional characteristics and capacities, grounded in the moral nature of democracy” as well as “fidelity to the public good, principled decision making, and the exercise of responsible discretion” underpin morally legitimate and morally competent public service leadership (Garofalo and Geuras 2005, 270).
In keeping with Mark Moore’s image of the public administrator-as- explorer, who searches for public value, exercising initiative and judgment
(Moore 1995)but also being responsive to political authority, we envisage
a public service leadership that articulates values, develops a vision, and in- cludes moral competence, clarity, and conviction (Garofalo and Geuras 2005, 270). This is leadership that entails discretion, hard choices, and transparency. Public servants are moral actors whose discretion and decisions demand the application of moral judgment in policy and management, rather than simple obedience to hierarchical directives. While this does not exclude the need for laws, codes, and sanctions, these legalisms are not surrogates for genuine moral leadership.
The third and final ingredient in our recipe for improving public discourse and governance is transparency. Transparency is both an instrumental and a normative value, intended to increase information to citizens in order to facilitate more effective choices and to ensure greater accountability, and designed to contribute to legitimate governance by helping to resolve the perennial principal-agent problem. But the application of transparency in specific circumstances often conflicts with other values or interests. For ex- ample, disclosure of data can jeopardize privacy, public safety, or proprietary information. Therefore, the skills needed to interpret and apply information and to discern the utility of transparency in particular situations are vital ele- ments in governance (Fenster 2006; Florini 2002, 2003; Fung, Graham, and Weil 2002, 2004; Stiglitz, 1999). We maintain that these very skills are at the
ADMINISTRATIVE LEADERSHIP AND TRANSPARENCY 71 heart of what morally conscious and competent public administrators need to do their jobs and to contribute to the elevation of public discourse and the quality of public decisions.
Privatization in the United States
In this section, we focus only indirectly on the merits of the privatization case and more directly on the fact that privatization or contracting out or the hollowing out of the state—whatever the term of art may be—has occurred with no universally understood rationale or justification as well as no public discourse. It has metastasized across American government to encompass not only defense but also prisons, education, environmental protection, information technology, health and human services, and even intelligence collection and budget preparation. The fundamental determination of what is inherently governmental and, thus, not to be outsourced has been virtually ignored, and contractors have become what some call a fourth branch of government. Therefore, privatization is an issue on which moral leadership and public discourse are vitally needed, since actions have been taken in the name of citizens on which citizens have had no opportunity to express their judgments.
Consider, first, the dimensions of privatization in the United States. Be- tween 2000 and 2006, spending on federal contracts alone rose from $207 billion to approximately $400 billion, an increase attributable largely to the Iraq war, homeland security, and Hurricane Katrina, but also to a belief in the value of outsourcing governmental activity. As stated in an editorial by the New York Times:
While the private sector personnel in Iraq have attracted the most attention, many day-to-day operations are no longer in the hands of federal employees. Functions as disparate as clerical work and tax collection are handled by private companies, while oversight of this always for-profit work is being sorely neglected. (“Government Inside Out,” February 7, 2007)
Therefore, we are faced with the perennial questions of cost, accountability, and propriety, as well as potential fraud, waste, and abuse. But there are also a number of underlying issues that transcend contractual violations, issues concerning competition that putatively leads to savings, the nature of inher- ently governmental work, the effect of contracting out on agency capacity to negotiate and manage contracts, the link between political contributions, lobbying, and the awarding of contracts, and the impact on public scrutiny and transparency. As Daniel Yankelovich (1991) maintains, these issues as well
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as others demand the intervention of citizens-as-stakeholders in governance, public interest groups, media, think tanks, and public administrators-as-moral agents “in which good questions are more important than assertions of moral
privilege or the exercise of power”(91).
The Vicious Circle of Distrust
The issue of privatization is basic to attitudes regarding public service in the United States. Long-standing negative attitudes toward government and posi- tive attitudes toward private enterprise contribute to a prima facie reaction favorable to privatization among Americans. Whatever justifications there may be for private enterprise, they have their limits. While the free market may be fine for businesses producing innumerable consumer products, even the most libertarian of political analysts recognize a need for some public agencies; Robert Nozick, the foremost libertarian philosopher, who argues for minimal government, still acknowledges the need for at least a public force to defend the populace and guarantee contracts (Nozick 1974). Yet the distrust of government is so pervasive that whenever privatization is recommended, a deafening chorus of “Amen” is heard.
Distrust is a vicious circle. Public administrators decry the lack of trust that the public, at least in the United States, has in government and its bureaucracy, but the problem will continue to exist as long as Kaifeng Yang’s missing link, that is, public administrators’ trust in citizens, is absent (Yang 2005, 273–85). Before the public will trust the public service, it must be transparent regarding its activities. But public administrators are skeptical of the public’s ability to understand them, so they are reluctant to be overly transparent concerning their policies, procedures, and budgets. The lack of transparency, in turn, contributes to a distrust of government. That distrust is exacerbated when ethical breaches and professional lapses of public officials occur, because the public has no concept of the enormous mass of good behavior of public administrators who are reluctant to discuss what they do because they are afraid that they will be misunderstood. The few bad apples appear enormous when there is nothing else visible in the barrel.
If the vicious circle is to be broken, public administration must take the active role. Public administrators have nothing to gain by passively accepting public distrust as natural and inevitable. Nor can they wait for the public to come to its senses and become more aware of the nature of the public service. We need some good.
Public administrators live under rules that the general public considers incomprehensible at best and wasteful or self-protective at worst. But the public has little understanding of the reasons behind such rules. Private citi-
ADMINISTRATIVE LEADERSHIP AND TRANSPARENCY 73 zens, especially conservatives, complain that a private company could never survive in a competitive environment and make a profit under the rules of the public bureaucracy. They are, of course, correct. Public organizations are not private companies, do not make profits, and are not in a competitive environment. Public organizations exist specifically to do things that a pri- vate company cannot do as well as they can. The environment of the public organization is necessarily different from that of the private company. Armies, police departments, welfare agencies, and environmental protection agencies do not and should not compete with other like agencies for profit resulting from their activities.
It is too easy to throw up our hands and lament, “They’ll never understand.” They surely will not understand if no one explains to them the difference between public and private organizations. But the explanation can only come from the public service itself.
The problem of explaining the workings of the public service to the served public is daunting. Nevertheless it must be undertaken. Doctors and attorneys must explain the complexities of their professional advice to those whom they serve, and so must public administrators.
The barriers to transparency of the sort needed to promote understanding and allay distrust are numerous. The task is especially difficult in the United States, which, from its inception, has had a tradition of distrust in government. Among the three dominant perspectives of early America, the Madisonian, with its insistence on separation of powers, and the Jeffersonian, with its preference for small, local government, were the most overtly distrustful. But even Federalists were wary of government. John Adams favored a strong presidency but did not necessarily trust government as a whole. In a letter to Jefferson, Adams summarized their differences by stating that he feared the aristocracy of Congress while Jefferson feared the monarchy of the presidency. Both were inspired by a fear of government, though of different branches.
There are also internal barriers that the public service imposes upon itself, and their erosion is a necessary condition of public trust. Some of those barriers are understandable. Distrust of government and the lack of understanding of its functions are pervasive and contribute to a reluctance of public organiza- tions to discuss their activities too overtly. Furthermore, organizations may discourage employees from speaking too openly for fear that the employees may be interpreted as speaking for the organization as a whole. In such cases, the organizations are not trying to hide anything but merely ensuring that the public does not confuse private opinion with organizational commitment. An additional issue is that of protecting the privacy of employees. There is also the general concern of whether an organization can function properly if it has the public always watching over it. Moreover, while the public complains about
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red tape, more of it will be generated by procedures that force organizations to constantly write reports for public consumption.
Public administrators, moral agents, have, in addition to serving the public with their professional expertise, the responsibility of explaining the value of their service to the public. The public administrator is an educator as well as a performer of professional duties. But the education must take place in a context free of the aforementioned barriers. Public servants at all levels should be permitted to explain the importance of the public service, its strengths, its requirements, and its limitations. In order to make their cases, public admin- istrators should not be cast as spokespersons for a particular organization or for government as a whole but should offer their expertise as citizens in a common endeavor with their fellow citizens to form a better society. Public administrators, chosen for their commitment to moral agency more than to any specific organization, should find venues to participate in dialogue, un- encumbered by organizational loyalties and untainted by the appearance of such loyalties, with all levels of the general public.
Reframing Administrative Leadership and Transparency
Just as collaboration between citizens and public servants is essential for the creation of public discourse and public judgment, so, too, is collaboration between public servants, academics, professional associations, and relevant public interest groups essential for reframing the relationship between ad- ministrative leadership and transparency. Fundamental to this process is the revitalization of mutual trust, the covenant between public administrators, as citizens in league with the rest of us, and the general public. In this regard, we propose a venue similar to Benjamin Barber’s (1998) national civic forum “in which civil speech and reasonable political argument among geographi- cally and economically dispersed communities becomes possible” (85). The advantages of such a forum, according to Barber, include horizontal con- versation among citizens rather than the more typical vertical conversation between citizens and elites; ongoing deliberation instead of a single event; and the possible use of interactive media to enable dialogue as opposed to demagogic talk radio, for example, or the commercially dominated electoral process. While the specific details of this type of event would need to be developed and calibrated to particular issues and circumstances, the idea behind it merits serious consideration, along with consideration of public servants qua moral agents as more than bit players in public discourse. In their new, more central role, morally conscious and morally competent public administrators would bridge the gap between citizens and experts by embodying the qualities of both and contributing an explicit concern
ADMINISTRATIVE LEADERSHIP AND TRANSPARENCY 75 for values as well as the technical information and proficiency required for informed policy judgments.
One might be tempted to write off the general public as too fickle and uninformed to benefit from any such heady forums. Polling data appears to show a public that changes its mind by the week and that has little deep knowledge of the major issues that government must address. But the appear- ance may be misleading.
Yankelovich (1991) makes a distinction between mass opinion and public judgment. He defines mass opinion as “poor quality public opinion as defined
by defects of inconsistency, volatility, and nonresponsibility” (42).Mass
opinion occurs when people consider issues lightly, perhaps because they are not pressing at the time, when a subject is beyond their understanding, and when they have not thought about all of its aspects. Public judgment has been reached on an issue when “people have struggled with the issue, thought about it in their own terms, and formed a judgment they are willing to stand by” (42).
The best-publicized polls report on mass opinion and therefore present a misleading impression of the public. Its ill-considered opinions therefore masquerade as public judgment when they are really public opinion. The purpose of the forums, which would discuss issues of serious concern, would address public judgment.
It may be argued that the public in general would have little time for such discussions. Most people, one might assume, would be so consumed by their private concerns that they would not take the time for intellectual and informa- tive conversation. We firmly believe that, if the issues discussed are important enough to the public, it will participate. However, even if the forums are at- tended by a relatively small group of more informed and interested people, Yankelovich has some comforting data.
He argues that even a few can have a strong influence on public judgment. He cites a poll that showed a remarkable ignorance on the part of the Ameri- can public concerning their political leadership (Yankelovich 1991, 47). In the poll, taken during the presidency of George H.W. Bush, only three out of four people could identify Dan Quayle as the nation’s vice president. Yet many political scientists remained unconcerned because they were aware that only a small part of the public is concerned about such matters, but that part was most influential.
It would be hasty to conclude that that small portion, alone, involves itself in the political process. When the rest of society takes interest in an issue, the knowledgeable core will likely grow; when people pay attention to matters of importance, they tend to bone up on them. Nevertheless, even the small group that maintains constant political interest has a disproportionate influence on
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society as a whole. They write letters to editors and sometimes guest editori- als. They organize neighborhood groups and local discussion panels. They meet with their fellow citizens in coffee shops and hair salons. The informed few do not, of themselves, constitute public judgment, but they contribute most significantly to it.
We do not argue that these discussion groups will convert the public on issues such as privatization or transform them magically into true believers in the honest benevolence of the public sector. The process of education will not end with such forums but they can contribute greatly to its progress.
References
Barber, B.R. 1998. A Place for Us: How to Make Society Civil and Democracy Strong. New York: Hill & Wang.
Fenster, M. 2006. “The Opacity of Transparency.” Iowa Law Review 91: 885–949. Florini, A. 2002. “Increasing Transparency in Government.” International Journal
on World Peace 19 (3): 3–37.
———. 2003. The Coming Democracy: New Rules for Running a New World. Wash- ington, DC: Island Press.
Fung, A., M. Graham, and D. Weil. 2002. The Political Economy of Transparency: What Makes Disclosure Policies Sustainable? Cambridge, MA: John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.
Fung, A., D. Weil, M. Graham, and E. Fagotto. 2004. The Political Economy of Transparency: What Makes Disclosure Policies Effective? Cambridge, MA: John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.
Garofalo, C., and D. Geuras. 2006. Common Ground, Common Future: Moral Agency in Public Administration, Professions, and Citizenship. Boca Raton, FL: Taylor & Francis.
Geuras, D., and Garofalo, C. 2005. Practical Ethics in Public Administration, 2nd ed. Vienna, VA: Management Concepts.
Moore, M.H. 1995. Creating Public Value. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Nozick, R. 1974. Anarchy, State and Utopia. Malden, MA: Basic Books.
Stiglitz, J.E. 1999. “On Liberty, the Right to Know, and Public Disclosure: The Role of Transparency in Public Life.” Oxford Amnesty Lecture, Oxford University Press.
Winston, K. 2003. “Moral Competence in the Practice of Democratic Governance.” In For the People: Can We Fix Public Service? ed. J.D. Donahue and J.S. Nye Jr., 169–87. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
Yang, K. 2005. “Public Administrators’ Trust in Citizens: A Missing Link in Citizen Involvement Efforts.” Public Administration Review 65 (3): 273–85.
Yankelovich, D. 1991. Coming to Public Judgment. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse Uni- versity Press.
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