Between Citizen and Administrator: Administrative Ethics and PAR

For American public administration, the effort to legitimate administrative discretion and convincingly to integrate the exercise of that political power with democratic institutions and processes has been ongoing and closely associated with administrative ethics. In other words, the rise of the American administrative state has been accompanied by efforts to identify and to formulate rules for the wise and proper use of administrative discretion. These efforts have also prompted considerable attention to questions relating to the substance of the public administrator's duties, obligations, and responsibilities. Likewise, the limitations of institutional, organizational, and legal controls have sparked efforts to identify the character traits or virtues that public administrators should themselves possess if they are to be trusted to use public authority wisely and in the public interest.