Administrative Ethics and Executive Decisions: Channeling and Containing Administrative Discretion

As first responders to public problems, administrators must survey situations, identify solutions, and occasionally make executive decisions that are binding upon the government as a whole. The ability for administrators to assert claims that orient the government in a particular direction is not only powerful, but it can also be problematic and even dangerous. For administrators, the tension between moving in a spirited way, and remaining sensible, is a problem of how to exercise one’s discretion, especially in the U.S. context, which demands that both be considered and actualized. In dealing with these competing expectations, Chad B. Newswander analyzes how administrators can incorporate executive, legislative, and judicial tendencies to help them handle the problem of discretion. Expanding the thinking of the constitutional school of public administration thought, Administrative Ethics and Executive Decisions is a theoretically grounded and empirically rich study of how administrators incorporate a constitutional ethos to handle the problem of discretion.