Accountability and Ethics

This chapter considers managerial, political, and legal perspectives on accountability and ethics. Ethics is considered an internal, personal check-a sense of personal responsibility; accountability is the process of applying external checks on public administrators. Because the ethics and accountability of public administrators are truly a worldwide concern, it is worth taking some time to consider precisely why public administrators may abuse their public trust and act in ways considered by the citizenry and/or political authorities to be in the public interest. The new public management and new public governance have radically different views of accountability and ethics. Combining these two concerns and adding some of the externally oriented approaches of the political perspective can provide the beginnings of a synthesis in ethics and accountability in contemporary public administration. Public administrative and constitutional doctrines advocate the separation of functions among different structural units, such as agencies, bureaus, and branches of government.