Childhood bads,parenting goods,and the right to procreate

Abstract

Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift, together with many other philosophers, think that adults’ interests in raising a child can give them a moral right to parent when they will be adequate parents. We consider whether the same interest could give such adults a moral right to procreate, as a means of acquiring a child to raise. We argue that the interest in parenting cannot support a right to procreate, because the features of childhood that make parenting uniquely valuable for adults are bad for children. Adults may have a right to procreate, but they do not have that right due to their interest in a parent–child relationship.     

Experimental analysis of the effect of standards on compliance and performance

Legal directives – whether laws, regulations, or contractual provisions – can be written along a spectrum of specificity, about which behavioral and legal scholarship present conflicting views. We hypothesized that the combination of specificity and monitoring promotes compliance but harms performance and trust, whereas the combination of specificity and good faith enhances both the informative goal‐setting aspects of specificity and people's sense of commitment. To test these hypotheses, we used a 2x2x2 experimental design in which participants were instructed to edit a document with either general or detailed instructions, with a reference to good faith or without it, and with a review of the work or without it. Participants could engage in various levels and kinds of editing, allowing us to distinctly measure both compliance and performance. When participants require information and guidance, as in the case of editing, we found that specificity increases performance relative to the vague standard condition. We discuss the characteristics of the regulatory frameworks in which our findings are especially relevant.     

Ethics as an Enabler of Public Policy

Ethics constrains us. But ethics can also act as an ‘enabler’, helping to secure compliance with public policies. Basing policies on ethical principles helps the public know what is required of them by public policies. Framing policies in those ways also primes people to think in terms of their own ethically based reasons for action. Basing policies on ethical principles can assist in securing the cooperation of potential veto players by creating cooperative norms and a culture of trust.     

Public sector innovation in the Asia-pacific trends,challenges, and opportunities

Public organizations face a multitude of challenges that force them to innovate existing processes, policies, programs, and products. Indeed, in recent years, innovation has become a core topic of study in public administration. However, the vast majority of the public sector innovation literature stems from the United States and Western Europe. The lack of Asia-Pacific studies is particularly striking given that countries like Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan consistently rank high on public sector innovation. This special issue brings together state of the art empirical research on public sector innovation in the Asia-Pacific region that examines a range of drivers and outcomes of innovation, including studies comparing Asia-Pacific countries and countries in the East and the West. The findings show that public sector employees in the studied countries all seek opportunities to innovate, whereas cultural norms and values either constrain or enable innovative behaviour and affect the extent to which employees experience leadership support for displaying such behaviour.     

Friendship and care: gendered practices within personal communities in Portugal

What is the role of friends in practices of care within intimate relationships, either towards each other, or in supporting caring practices towards other persons (children, parents or other kin)? And to what extent are these caring practices gendered? I explore how friendship either disrupts, or reproduces, the ethics of care that cross-cuts gender relations throughout society. I focus on the experience of Portuguese men and women and take as reference their personal community, understood as the active and meaningful personal ties they consider to be central in their lives. Drawing on qualitative data from 30 in-depth interviews, I explore their experiences of care in three dimensions: caring for others; caring for oneself; and being cared for. Results show that, while it is not possible to assert a complete centring of personal lives on friendship, friends stand out as important sources of care in these three different situations, providing both emotional and practical support.     

Media corruption and issues of journalistic and institutional integrity in post-communist countries: The case of Bulgaria

From a normative standpoint the media are usually seen as one of the pillars of a national integrity system, entrusted with the tasks of exposing and preventing acts of corruption and educating the public of the harm caused by corruption. Nevertheless, corruption continues to be one of the most significant challenges that Europe faces, undermining citizens' trust in democratic institutions and weakening the accountability of political leadership. Evidence suggests that in fragile EU democracies such as Bulgaria, despite more than eight years of full membership and numerous preventive measures, corruption is rife and the press is hardly capable of exposing abuses of power or authority. On the contrary - drawing on in-depth interviews with 35 Bulgarian journalists - this paper argues that since communism collapsed in the late 1980s the media in post-communist societies such as Bulgaria has gradually become an instrument to promote and defend private vested interests, and is plagued by corruption. Senior journalists and editors cast serious doubt over the ability of the post-communist free press and journalism to act as a watchdog for society.     

Moral Values and Responsible Administration: Live Organs Transplant Systems in the United States and Germany

This article explores the unexpected ways in which recently introduced accountability mechanisms shape hospital administrators’ and physicians’ actions in Germany and in the United States. Though the reforms were designed to provide governments with more control over hospitals by increasing doctors’ and managers’ direct answerability to clients, this research finds that they fail to achieve these objectives by overlooking and clashing with existing behavioral settings within the medical sector. This analysis employs a newly synthesized theoretical framework at the nexus of ethics and accountability, as well as a comparative empirical exploration of the organ transplant systems in Germany and the U.S.     

新公共管理理论与我国警察行政伦理建设

新公共管理理论是将官僚的、权威式的作风和消极性民主政体转换成有效率的、回应性的、顾客导向的新型政府管理模式。新公共管理理论模式下的政府公共行政与公共管理体系,必然要求公安机关建立与之相适应的警察行政伦理。新公共管理理论对新的历史时期我国警察行政伦理建设及发展有着极其重要的影响。     

关于中国主体缺失的思考：以西方文化为镜

与西方相比,中国文化缺乏主体性背景。这种缺失导致了近现代中国在吸收西方理性、自由、平等等文化理念方面的困难,滞缓了中国的现代化进程。相反,西方文化内涵了理性（逻各斯）和自由（努斯）的因子,为其主体性的确立奠定了基础。中国要确立现代的主体性,将主体从诗意直觉、伦理及自然中复活,需要借鉴和吸收西方文化的精神内蕴。