Ethical Leadership, Trustworthiness and the Bureaucratic State

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASPA as an organization.

By Stephen M. King
December 20, 2024

President-elect Trump has vowed to “demolish the deep state.” He believes that by dismantling the deep state he will rid the federal government of inept and unaccountable bureaucrats, reduce the size and power of the federal government, and restore fiscal sanity. To this end, he formed a blue-ribbon style commission titled the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). While an analysis of DOGE’s purpose, goals, and means would be interesting, I contend it would only uncover symptoms of a much larger issue: how to reestablish the balance between democracy and bureaucracy. I will discuss three: institutionalization of ethical administrative leadership, reinstatement of government trustworthiness, and reaffirmation for the moral efficacy of the bureaucratic state.

First, public administrators are not just leaders; they are ethical administrative leaders. The administrator’s “moral burden” is much more than reconciling the technical with the political; it is rediscovering the balance between the democratic and the bureaucratic. Ethical administrative leaders not only display technical expertise and vocational knowledge, but they are bound by the oath of office, motivated by the “ethic of administration,” and committed to the purpose of serving the greater good.

Ethical administrative leaders recognize the responsibility of fulfilling their fidelity to authority, beginning at the lowest level of decision making. The schoolteacher, for example, is responsible for not only preparing their students to take the end of year standardized tests but teaching and modeling the next generation on how to be civic-minded and constitutionally intelligent. The urban county health director, for example, must steer a course through the rules and regulations covering the administration of health care services to the poor, whether they are citizens or illegal immigrants, providing care and attention to all. James Q. Wilson argued that the devolution of authority in a bureaucracy is necessary to not only gain access to “all available information for making reasoned” (and I add ethical) decisions, but to form committed and working relationships with agency employees, external political agents and service recipients.

Finally, ethical administrative leaders are professionally and morally responsible to meet community needs wherever, whenever, and to whomever they may occur. Whether it is responding in the aftermath of natural disasters or committing to building social capital in neighborhoods and communities, ethical administrative leaders are to set aside their personal and political likes and dislikes to meet the challenges before them. Ethical administrative leadership is not optional; it is necessary to do the job right and do it well.

A second priority for reinvigorating the relationship between democracy and bureaucracy is restoring the citizens’ trust in government. It is at an all-time low. Pew reports a 50-plus percentage drop between 1958-2019 in the number of citizens who believe that the federal government “can be trusted all or some of the time.” While the level of trust in state and local governments is somewhat higher, citizens’ confidence level in government overall to perform basic public services continues to wane. However, is the critical issue to measure citizen trust? Or is it to assess the government’s level of trustworthiness?

Recent research suggests that recipients who have good experience with delivery of government services, particularly at the state and local levels, such as in education, healthcare, law enforcement or social welfare, tend to not only have higher levels of trust in the agency providing the service, but in the public official they interact with. According to Russell Hardin, “Learning to trust will depend on the success of trusting, which will turn on the trustworthiness of those we trust.” This suggests that “…enhancing trustworthiness…will increase levels of trust,” producing a higher level of cooperation, and leading to what Hardin calls a “moralizing effect” of trustworthiness. If this “moralizing effect” of a government’s trustworthiness is real, then it may be because of the moral relationship between citizen and ethical public administrator.

Lastly, there is the need to reaffirm the moral efficacy of the bureaucratic state. In his 1975 essay, Wilson demonstrates the “rise of the bureaucratic state” is anchored in several administrative and political evolutions, such as the rise of political authority, clientelism and “cooperative federalism.” But the critical value of the bureaucratic state is behavior. Whether the behavior is economic, political, or organizational says much about the intention and motivation of not only the agency or program, but of the ethical administrative leader who implements and oversees the agency or program.

The bureaucratic state is not a monolithic labyrinth, overflowing with personnel who consistently and without concern for the public, defy laws, rules and regulations, and who selfishly pad their position in the organization. Nor is every agency and program designed solely to serve political purposes or promote ideological positions. In the final analysis, bureaucratic behavior is anchored both in Weber’s sociological definition of the “ideal type,” and in Frederickson’s “ethic of bureaucracy,” where the ethical administrative leader operates from a “moral basis of public administration.”   

In conclusion, DOGE may very well find ways to cut waste and fraud, reduce or reorganize personnel categorizations, or even shut down whole departments and redirect their services to the states. Ultimately, though, DOGE is only scratching the proverbial surface. The real answer remains in the age-old question of how to reconcile the purposes and practices between bureaucratic principles and democratic values.

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Author: Stephen M. King is Professor of Government at Regent University, Virginia Beach, VA. He teaches undergraduate courses in American politics, state and local government, and public policy, and has taught graduate courses in public policy analysis and ethical leadership and administration. He frequently publishes on the topics of ethics and public administration and leadership, and spirituality in the public workplace. He is President (AY24-25) of the Hampton Roads Chapter of ASPA. He served on the Advisory Council for SEIGov, ASPA. (AY21-24). His latest book is Ethical Public Leadership: Foundation, Organization, and Discovery. Contact him at [email protected].

 

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