Making post-Soviet counterpublics: the aesthetics of Limonka and the National-Bolshevik Party

This article focuses on the shaping of the aesthetics and ideology of Eduard Limonov’s National-Bolshevik Party (NBP) through the pages of the radical newspaper Limonka. In order to study the making of the NBP as a political and intellectual community, the piece discusses Limonka’s editorial line, its graphic style, and the alternative cultural canon that this radical publication promoted, as well as several interviews with National-Bolshevik activists involved in this process. During its first years of existence, Limonka proposed a selection of controversial artistic, literary, and political role models, and the creation of an alternative fashion and lifestyle. The article argues that by provocatively combining totalitarian symbols, the aesthetics and posture of the historical avant-gardes, and Western counterculture, Limonka produced a collective narrative that contributed to the shaping of a new language of political protest in post-Soviet Russia. This resulted in a complex combination of stiob, a form of parody that involves an over-identification with its own object, and a neo-romantic impulse. This new discursive mode, which the article defines as “post-Soviet militant stiob,” should be seen as part of a series of tactics of radical resistance to what the National-Bolsheviks saw as the dominant neoliberal discourse of the mid-1990s.     

Ethics in leadership: The case of local politicians

The mainstream literature on leadership has little to say about the role of ethics. Equally, much of this literature is concerned with the private sector and with managerial leadership. This paper addresses both these gaps, by reporting on the development of a scale for measuring ethical values in local political leadership, the public service values scale. This is one section of a larger instrument for assessing the skills of local political leaders: the Warwick Political Leadership Questionnaire. The paper reports on the use of this instrument in a 360 degree format, following piloting of a self assessment version. The responses of 19 elected members and 241 feedback givers are analysed. These data offer support for the validity and reliability of the public service values scale. The paper concludes with a research agenda, offering suggestions for how this scale can be applied to researching ethics in leadership.     

Catering to Organizational Needs in Ethics Management: The Case of the European Commission

This article examines the ethical challenges encountered by European Commission officials in their day-to-day work. Based on an intra-organizational comparison between three Directorate Generals (DGs), the analysis reveals that ethical questions differ in these settings, depending on the type of external actors employees engage with. This internal heterogeneity makes the European Commission an interesting (unusual) case, which highlights the challenges of practising ethics management in a way that is truly responsive to organizational needs. The policy solution implemented by the Commission as a response—the appointment of “ethics correspondents” at DG level—has been only moderately successful.     

Ethics and public administration: critique and reconstruction

In the post-Watergate era, many observers saw the renewed interest in administrative ethics as a passing fad. Now, over a decade later, the continued interest in this area belies this judgment. Indeed, this increased concern with administrative ethics is rooted in the realization that administration is as much an ethica, as technical pursuit. One cannot read John Rohr's "Ethics in Public Administration: A State of the Discipline Report," delivered at the 1986 ASPA Conference, without receiving the distinct impression that administrative ethics is an area of practice and study that is experiencing a profound upheaval. Views are diverse and often inchoate. Assumptions behind ethical prescr- ptions are still frequently unstated and unexamined. In addition, we still continue to seek techniques that will ensure administrative ethicality without understanding the nature of the ethical problems confronted in public administration and the reasons they are confronted. In short, there exists a need for theoretical clarification and classification in the area of ethics and public administration.     

Ethics in Local Government: Evaluating Self-Regulation in England and Wales

Local government in England and Wales is subject to the implementation of the Labour government's 'new ethical framework' legislation. This involves a statutory code of conduct for councillors, local standards committees to promote good practice and external investigative and adjudicative bodies to deal with allegations of misconduct. Prior to this many local authorities had adopted a self-regulatory approach to improving their ethical practice. This article charts the development of non-statutory policy towards standards of conduct - largely due to the generally high ethical standards in councils. A study of councils who have introduced self-regulation through standards committees shows that it provides a positive strategy for strengthening the ethical climate, although there is a role for external verification and, potentially, intervention where councils face structural problems of misconduct and/or corruption. The current creation of a statutory system with powerful investigatory agencies is not justified in the context of levels of misconduct and the experience of self-regulation.     

Ethics in organizations: a perspective on reciprocation

Some scholars have assigned the responsibility for ethical conduct in the public sector to individual administrators. Supporters of this perspective contend that individuals are able to introduce ethics into the administrative process by assuming personal responsibility for ethical action. The inference is that organizations cannot be expected to assume responsibility for ethical conduct.

Conversely the contention that individual ethics are inadequate in organizations is posed as a counter argument. Supporters of this contention argue that individual integrity does not mean that organizations will act ethically. They argue that organizational ethics are independent of individual ethics. Hence, they are treated as separate entities that do not compliment each other.

An argument that organizations and individuals engage in complimentary actions which lead to ethical conduct is largely absent in the literature. I argue that there is a reciprocal relationship between individuals and organizations. Thus, individual and organizational ethics are not separate but interactive entities     

Full and Open Competition in Public Procurement: Values and Ethics in Contracting Opportunity

ABSTRACT

Governments have sought to respond to increasing pressures to accomplish aims with efficiency and at low cost. A perception of the potential for corruption and waste of public resources has been met with calls for transparency and accountability. Competition is believed to lead to impartial, optimal outcomes, but attention paid to competition in the literature suggests that the benefits are not universally clear. This paper considers ‘full and open competition’ as a policy promise, ethical obligation, and a matter of justice, drawing upon work of John Rawls and others, in the United States case. The research question is: What do Federal procurement data tell us about the nature of full and open competition in practice? This study draws upon contract data available from the U.S. Federal government, for fiscal years from 2015 to 2018. Through an ordinal regression, it is suggested that variation in the extent of competition results in part from size of project, size of the business (or potential business) receiving the project, and the industry classification, particularly in cases centering on commercial acquisitions. While ‘full and open competition’ is frequently employed, the difference between the normative value of the concept in statute, and practical outcomes in implementation, is clear. This difference has consequences for both vendors and the government.     

The Impact of New Public Management Reforms on Public Servants' Ethics: Towards a Theory

Recent years have witnessed an increasing concern about the impact of New Public Management (NPM) reforms on public servants' ethics. The academic literature about this topic is still characterized by considerable confusion and the article proposes a falsifiable theory as a way out of this. Specifically, it demonstrates that, when all the claims in the literature are translated into the proposed conceptual framework, they amount to an integrated set of propositions (that is, a theory) about the causal relationship between organizational processes (as changed by NPM-reforms) and public servants' ethics. Such an integrated theory is possible because, although the normative positions taken by the authors are clearly rival ones, their empirical claims are complementary. With the diverse claims thus integrated into one theory, the article provides a basis for empirical research and for the NPM-ethics debate to proceed in a more explicit and systematic way.