Invited Essay

The American Review of Public Administration

Building Ethical 41(1) 3­–22

© The Author(s) 2011
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DOI: 10.1177/0275074010375715
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Terry L. Cooper1

Abstract
In response to a perceived yearning for community in the modern urbanU.S., a definition of commu-
nity is advanced, and a distinction is drawn between moral and ethical community. The problems of
imposing moral community on diverse urban societies are considered and an argument is advanced
for building ethical community. The necessity for a deliberative conversation among members of
an ethical community is discussed and some of the current means for conducting it are examined.
Following a discussion of the role of experts in these conversations, the implications for academic
programs are drawn out. The article concludes with 7 steps toward building ethical community.

Keywords
ethical community, moral community, individualism, deliberation

What does it mean to think of myself as an individual in the contemporary world? How am I related
to others around me, proximate and distant, known and unknown? In what ways am I free to pursue
my own interests and impulses? What are my obligations to other people—acquaintances, cowork-
ers, organizational superiors, friends and family, as well as strangers of various sorts? What needs
do I have that can only be satisfied by associating with others? Does the fulfillment of my life
require contribution to the fulfillment of other lives? Building ethical community in the contem-
porary world begins, not with abstract theoretical reflection, but with existential questions such as
these that emerge in our minds in connection with certain specific concrete life situations.
“Building” ethical community only becomes a concern in the absence or waning of any over-
arching shared tradition, the loss of foundational beliefs and values, or the failure of autocratic
governance. The term itself suggests the lack of ethical community, an assumption that it must
be rehabilitated, restored, or created de novo. For traditional societies, in which moral norms are
taken as given in their cultural history, neither is such “building” required nor is it a matter of
concern. For authoritarian societies, in which a moral code is imposed, no such “building” is
allowed. In highly homogeneous societies, shared moral norms operate informally without self-
conscious reflection and overt effort to “build” a community rooted in ethics.
However, we who find ourselves in increasingly diverse urban societies without a common tradition
and aspiring to govern ourselves democratically, that is, with some significant measure of self-rule,
experience our life situation as increasingly problematic. How shall we deal with the different cultural

1
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Corresponding Author:
Terry L. Cooper, The Maria B. Crutcher Professor in Citizenship and Democratic Values, School of Policy,
Planning, and Development, RGL 302, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0626, USA
Email: tlcooper@usc.edu
4 The American Review of Public Administration 41(1)

orientations, value systems, and lifestyles that tend to divide us and generate conflict among us—some
of which is expressed through parochialism, nativism, religious bigotry, racism, sexism, ageism, and
other “isms” that seem likely to deteriorate into violence all too easily? How shall we understand the
relationship between individual self-interest and social responsibility in such a world?
When one moves from these existential questions to descriptive theories of the world as it is
and normative theories about the world as one would like it to be, one invariably arrives in the
midst of the individualist–communitarian debate. This running philosophical battle over the prior-
ity of individual rights and liberties versus primary obligation to the community has been a lively
one, indeed, in the United States, as well as a growing number of other places. I suspect that is
so because it is not just another academic jousting match, but rather grows out of serious concerns
of large numbers of people as they attempt to work out satisfying and fulfilling lives. We are not
islands unto ourselves, we cannot live that way happily, but we do not know where to turn next.
In the U.S. context there is clearly a yearning for more stable and ongoing relatedness to people
beyond oneself and beyond the family circle. However, there is also a troubling ambivalence
about giving up any of one’s individual rights, liberties, and independence to become more involved
in the web of community with its interdependence, obligations, and constraints. Robert Bellah
and his coauthors captured this struggle in the American soul well a couple of decades ago in their
popular book, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Bellah,
Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, & Tipton, 1985).
This article does not review the ins and outs of that scholarly debate; it is familiar to many and has
become a bit tedious.1 Rather, I simply outline my own perspective with that debate in mind and explain
the basis for it. In brief, I believe that community is prior to individuality in the process of human
development, and not a secondary construct. It is community of a certain kind that makes individuality
genuinely possible. Thus, human beings do need community in some form because we are not able to
care for ourselves entirely, educate ourselves, and acquire the social skills necessary to function as
human beings apart from a rather complex and sustained network of relationships that constitute the
essence of community. These relationships include the family in various forms, but transcend it as we
move out into formal education, social involvements, the economy, and employment.
It should be clear then that the normative perspective advanced here is in some sense an expres-
sion of communitarian thought in the present social context. In the United States, at least, the
argument is that the pendulum has swung too far toward an overweening individualism and preoc-
cupation with individual interest. Community has always been treated as nice in a nostalgic sort
of way, but expendable as excess baggage in urban society in the face of more important economic
and political goals. It can be, and has been, sacrificed for freeway construction, economic devel-
opment, professional ambitions, or other such considerations. The social costs of destroying
communities, and the enormous difficulty involved in recreating them, is almost never seriously
considered, but always paid.

Toward a Working Definition of Community

A definition of “community” is called for at this point, so a working definition will be provided
because we are dealing here with a complex, multifaceted, and evolving concept. As some readers
may have discovered, defining community is not an easy task. At one time, we might have had
in mind simply a geographic community—a relatively small bounded area in which people knew
each other, had ongoing stable relationships, both formal through business and government and
informal through social activities, voluntary associations, and friendships.2 In late modern urban
society that geographically spatial definition is clearly inadequate, but still important. In addition
to place-based communities, we now experience similar relationships around our professions,
political lives, and voluntary associations that are geographically dispersed. These may exist
largely in cyberspace through Internet-based communication but also may or may not be found
Cooper 5

coming together in various geographic spaces from time to time rather than being rooted in one
space. So, both senses of community are intended here.
This working definition includes any network of ongoing relatively stable relationships among
people holding diverse views, but with at least some base of shared values and ethical norms;
some degree of caring, trust, and collaborative activity; working through channels of communica-
tion; and carrying out certain ritual-like activities that have the effect of affirming the relationships.
These ritualistic events include block parties, conversations at the local coffee house or pub,
neighborhood meetings, annual meetings of professional associations, award ceremonies, gradu-
ations, and membership initiations. This complex way of understanding community in our con-
temporary world generally follows definitions and treatments of community advanced by Robert
Bellah (1998), John Gardner (1991), and Philip Selznick (1992). More specifically, this perspec-
tive views community as a variable composed of a number of elements, such as historicity, identity,
mutuality, plurality, autonomy, participation, diversity, and integration. Community exists more
or less according to the presence or absence of these elements.3 Bellah et al. (1985) contrasts this
kind of community with what he refers to as “lifestyle enclaves.” They explain,

Whereas a community attempts to be an inclusive whole, celebrating the interdependence

of public and private life and of the different callings of all, lifestyle is fundamentally seg-
mental and celebrates the narcissism of similarity. It usually explicitly involves a contrast
with others who “do not share one’s lifestyle. (pp. 72-73)

Bellah et al. (1985) conclude that “the lifestyle enclave is the necessary social form of private life
in a society such as ours” (pp. 72-73). These enclaves provide helpful social support amidst the blizzard
of diversity in contemporary urban society, but they fall short of the requirements for community.4
Community relationships are sometimes instrumental, but must be more than that, also. There
must be some end value in the relationships that matters as much as the instrumental value. Com-
munities may involve international networks with these criteria that emerge around our professions,
as well as localized geographically bounded networks of those who happen to live in the same
area. These communities cannot be bounded and defined by outsiders; self-definition is required.5
The argument here is that geographic communities are extremely important and deserve our
greatest attention. People identify with places and take parts of their personal identity from them.
Politics still functions geographically, meaning that power and authority are attached to places.
Economic value is attached to places, including those places where communities exist. These
places need to be cultivated as communities, lest they become jungles without self-governance,
self-imposed social control, and self-generated shared values.
So with this unavoidably complex definition in mind let me move on to suggest that human
existence is inconceivable apart from the socialization process that nurtures us into more or less
productive and satisfying adulthood through community relationships. To the extent that this does
not occur, we find ourselves dealing with violent behavior, theft, incivility, disrespect for the
thoughts and opinions of others, and disregard for their rights. Apart from the relatively stable
and continuing web of relationships characteristic of communities, the interdependence of all life
goes unrecognized, mutuality does not flower, reciprocity is not learned, and the search for the
common good is not undertaken. Ultimately, social order itself is threatened; life becomes unbear-
ably uncertain, filled with anxiety, and fraught with danger.
Given the crucial importance of community for human development and social stability, it is
important for public officials to understand that communities cannot be easily “relocated,” or
“rebuilt.” Communities need to be seen as extremely valuable public resources because when
communities are wiped out for redevelopment projects or highways, relocation does not re-create
the community that once existed. They are relatively fragile organic webs of relationship that
grow and develop over time based on communication, shared history, and identification, as well
6 The American Review of Public Administration 41(1)

as proximity. Olivia Judson (2009) explained that recently as “Humpty Dumpty community.” She
referred to various ecological networks of interaction and relationship as exhibiting the “Humpty
Dumpty effect” because like that famous egg of the nursery rhyme, if it is shattered, “you cannot
rebuild it from its parts” (Judson, 2009).

Individualism and Self-Interest Reconsidered

At this point, it is important to anticipate objections from those who may view individualism as
the only defense against autocracy and oppressive collectivism. There is this tendency to see the
choices much too starkly. Individual autonomy is, indeed, essential to free and democratic govern-
ment. However, there are degrees of autonomy and forms of individualism to be considered beyond
that associated with the rugged totally self-interested type so prevalent in the United States and
other capitalist societies. We have reason to believe that not only is there at least one other form,
but that it was, in fact, dominant in the United States earlier in our history (although much less
so at present).
One of the most provocative observations of our famous French tourist, Alexis de Tocqueville
(1904), after touring the fledgling United States for 9 months in the 1830s was that these Americans
were extraordinarily individualistic, but that their saving grace was that they conducted themselves
according to the notion of “self-interest rightly understood.” He noted that through their experience
in constructing governments and associations—instruments of collective choice—these early
Americans learned that self-interest must be bounded by the interests of others. Otherwise, an egali-
tarian, democratic society could not work; the centrifugal forces of conflicting self-interests would
tear it apart. De Tocqueville (1904) admitted that this “self-interest rightly understood” did not lead
to the heroic self-sacrifice and extraordinary feats of altruism espoused by aristocratic societies, but
was a modest, workable ethic for a democratic society in pursuit of equality. He observed that this
way of understanding the relationship between individuals and the community:

Produces no great acts of self-sacrifice, but it suggests daily small acts of self-denial. By
itself it cannot suffice to make a man virtuous; but it disciplines a number of persons in
habits of regularity, temperance, moderation, foresight, self-command; and if it does not
lead men straight to virtue by the will, it gradually draws them in that direction by their
habits. If the principle of interest rightly understood were to sway the whole moral world,
extraordinary virtues would doubtless be more rare; but I think that gross depravity would
then also be less common. The principle of interest rightly understood perhaps prevents
men from rising far above the level of mankind, but a great number of other men, who were
falling far below it, are caught and restrained by it. Observe some few individuals, they are
lowered by it; survey mankind, they are raised. (p. 123)

The genius of this redefinition of civic virtue for an egalitarian society was, according to De
Tocqueville (1904), that this same social characteristic of equality also drove Americans to form
associations. Each individual found it necessary to combine into groups in order to muster the
power and other resources needed to accomplish social and political goals. The result was that
self-interested individual citizens were constantly confronted with their dependence on the com-
munity. Under these circumstances, enlightened self-interest became not only possible, but an
obviously essential quality of character. Self-interest rightly understood meant, then, understanding
the origins of one’s self in community and accepting one’s resultant obligations to it.6
More recently, the work of psychologist, Edward Sampson (1988), suggests that there is evidence
from a substantial amount of research in his field that also indicates that the choices are not simply
dichotomous—individualism or community. He maintains that it is possible to identify two major
Cooper 7

types of individualism that are mutually exclusive. Self-contained individualism, emphasizing the
separateness of each person from all others and from groups, and viewing community as a second-
ary artificial construct, is the kind generally associated with American society today. It identifies
firm boundaries between the self and others, seeks internalized personal control over one’s conduct,
and holds to an exclusionary concept of the self that assumes that other selves do not belong within
one’s own self-definition. However, Sampson also discerns the presence of ensembled individual-
ism, both in the United States and in other societies, that manifests fluid boundaries between the
self and others, a sense of control by a “field” that includes influence by other selves and groups,
and an inclusive concept of the self that views the self as partially constituted by other selves
(Sampson, 1988).7
These more complex understandings of what it means to be an individual suggest that one does
not necessarily sacrifice one’s individuality on entering into the web of relationships that are
inherent in community. “Both and” are possible. The idea that all human behavior is motivated
by self-interest is a meaningless shibboleth with a relatively brief intellectual history, having
emerged as a dominant idea only since the 17th century. It should not be taken as a given, inherent
characteristic of human nature. We have taught ourselves this assumption and it needs to be
replaced with an assumption closer to empirical reality.
To say that one is motivated by self-interest means nothing—it is literally nonsense—until one
defines what is in the interest of the self. Otherwise, it defines nothing; it heaps variable under-
standings of the interests of the self into one semantic lump to dismiss prosocial or altruistic
motivation.8 This kind of reductionism levels all motivation into some common denominator such
as pleasure or utility. It obscures that qualitative difference between finding “meaning” in some
activity and finding enjoyment. It assumes that the meaning found in saving a life is the same as
enjoying a candy bar. To define one’s interests in the closed and exclusive manner of self-contained
individualism is one thing, but to understand one’s self-interests as inextricably bound up with
the interests of others is quite another. The latter view seems to be more consistent with the empiri-
cal world and our experience of it. For support in social science research for this perspective, see
the reviews of a large number of studies presented in Alfie Kohn’s (1990) The Brighter Side of
Human Nature: Altruism and Empathy in Everyday Life, and Amitai Etzioni’s (1988) The Moral
Dimension: Toward a New Economics.
Robert Axelrod’s (1984) game theory research provides an additional perspective on how self-
interest rightly understood is developed and maintained. Axelrod has used game theory and
computer simulations to construct a theoretical framework for the requisites for cooperation in
society. The relevant finding from his research is that the central requirement for cooperative
action to emerge is “that individuals have a sufficiently large chance to meet again so that they
have a stake in their future interaction” (Axelrod, 1984, p. 20). He refers to that condition as “the
shadow of the future,” meaning that a relatively stable set of recurring relationships will lead
people to consider any particular decision and action in the light of its future consequences.
Axelrod’s prescription then for engendering the kind of cooperation that reflects self-interest
rightly understood is to expand and extend the shadow of the future. He concludes that “Mutual
cooperation can be stable if the future is sufficiently important relative to the present.” Axelrod
goes on to argue that “There are two basic ways of doing this: by making interactions more durable,
and by making them more frequent” (Axelrod, 1984, pp. 126-132). These are, of course, key
characteristics of community.
So, the question is not whether community is essential; nor whether we need more of it, nor is
it whether community needs to be cultivated in contemporary urban societies, but what form com-
munity should take and how that might be accomplished. Indeed, it does take a village to raise a
child into constructive and productive womanhood and manhood. Nevertheless, we are ambivalent
about living in a village, having found the freedom of urban life. We fear the oppression of villages
8 The American Review of Public Administration 41(1)

as we may have known them or read about them, but we feel lonely for some degree of commu-
nitarian experience. We have no clear image of what kind of village might provide that while
preserving our individual rights and freedoms.9

Moral Community and Ethical Community

It appears that there are two fundamental approaches to addressing these questions: one advocat-
ing what may be called moral community, the other searching for what will be referred to here
as ethical community. Although these terms, moral and ethical are often used interchangeably,
for purposes of this article, an attempt will be made to establish a more precise working distinc-
tion between them that is of crucial importance. It is important to emphasize that this is not another
case of academic semantic quibbling; it is the substantive distinction that is primary, not the terms
used to identify the perspectives (Frankena, 1973).

Moral Community
By “moral community” I have in mind first, those culturally homogeneous societies that were
historically shaped by some overarching shared tradition, the kind of community depicted in the
play, Fiddler on the Roof. As in the music of this play about a small village of Russian Jews in the
early 20th century, the focus of life in a moral community is “tradition, tradition, tradition—without
our tradition we are as shaky as a fiddler on the roof.” Tradition is received from the past and it
“tells us who we are, and what God expects of us” (Stein, 1971, p. 64).
Frances Moore Lappe and Paul Martin Du Bois (1995-1996) refer to these as “devolved” com-
munities. These communities are given, not chosen. According to Lappe and Du Bois, “These
communities were predictable, governed by inherited codes of conduct” (p. 7). They contrast
traditional communities with the “involved” communities of urban societies, which are not given,
but chosen. An involved community, based on our choice of roles, “offers not predictability and
comfort but challenge and deeper sense of purpose.” Lappe and Du Bois explain, “If devolved
community provides us status, based on our place in the order of things, involved community
offers us the chance to find meaning based on our unique contributions to purposes larger than
ourselves and our immediate families” (p. 8). Ethical communities, which will be discussed later,
are what Lappe and Du Bois refer to as involved communities.
In contemporary urban societies, where the power of tradition is broken and relativized, moral
community takes the form of attempts to deal with the near chaos of life by either of two means:
(a) attempting to impose a uniform moral code on everyone living within a given society, however
diverse it may be, or (b) separation into distinct homogeneous enclaves. In the first case, with a
righteous conviction of absolute truth about right and wrong, one group or another seeks to force
on all its particular moral code. Attempts to impose censorship over the Internet, public library
holdings, the arts, and the electronic media are one form this often takes. Prohibitions against
abortion, insistence on the teaching of “creationism” or “intelligent design” in public schools, and
constraints on sex education are others. The current struggle over the definition of marriage that
attempts to restrict it to man–woman relationships is an example of the impassioned nature of
moral community.
Absent the ability to impose moral standards, those advocating moral community with great
intensity often opt for the disaggregation of society into homogeneous enclaves. The various
separatist groups in the United States from Black nationalists to survivalists, militias, and religious
fundamentalist movements are expressions of the second approach, as are fundamentalist religious
movements in the Islamic world, and ideological authoritarian governments in places such as
Cooper 9

China and North Korea. These cut across national boundaries and plague much of the world,
including the United States.
Puritans in New England clearly sought moral community by the first of the two approaches.
While making extraordinarily significant contributions to democratic thought in the United States,
they assumed democracy among people adhering to a very specific moral code. They gave us the
concept of democratic covenant, the first instance of which in U.S. history was the Mayflower
Compact of 1620 (Heath, 1963). The Puritan democratic forms of church governance ultimately
evolved into the secular New England town meetings, the paragon of American participatory
democracy. They did these things we treasure today even while imposing the same strict moral
standards on everyone in the community. Some things were not open to debate; harsh punishment
was the consequence of breaking the prescribed moral code (Miller, 1954; Perry, 1944; Ziff, 1973).
Relying on the existence of already homogeneous moral community and retaining separation
among them was the general approach of the Antifederalists somewhat later in the American
political tradition. Confronted with increasingly destructive diversity among the 13 newly inde-
pendent states under the Articles of Confederation during 1781-1789, the Antifederalists saw
moral community as the solution. In the constitutional debate of 1787-1789, they argued for
keeping government close to home so that homogeneous groupings of people in particular locales
could more easily reach agreement, govern themselves without great strife, and live in harmony.
Packaging governmental institutions and authority separately around existing moral communities
was their solution (Ketcham, 1986).
The Federalists such as Hamilton, Madison, Jay, and Washington—those who ultimately pre-
vailed in our constitutional debate—moved for much more centralization of institutions and author-
ity; but leaving significant powers to the states. In so doing, they acknowledged the lack of shared
values because “the latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man” but saw this as a
problem. They described human nature as exhibiting “a zeal for different opinions concerning
religion, concerning government and many other points . . .” (Federalist 10 in Alexander Hamilton,
James Madison, and John Jay: The Federalist Papers, 1961). They feared that this diversity of
views would lead inevitably to factions that would be destructive of government if not controlled.
Instead, the Federalists created a set of shared institutions that would divide power between federal
and state governments and a separation of powers and a system of checks and balances within the
federal government. These institutional arrangements would prevent any particular faction from
imposing its views on the whole and would sustain the possibility of reaching decisions without
needing to agree on first principles (Horwitz, 1982).10
In the United States, that Federalist approach has served us quite well for more than 200 years,
although the federal government has been steadily democratized through the influence of Anti-
federalist values that have never really gone away.11 However, there are now problems that neither
party to the founding of the United States of America could have anticipated that must be resolved.
The problem for the Antifederalist perspective is that we have become a highly mobile people
and an intensely diverse urban society. We no longer find ourselves born into a community with
a set of values and moral norms rooted in a coherent tradition. Even if some of us still do, most
do not remain there, but move to urban settings that are increasingly heterogeneous in culture,
creed, political philosophy, race, sexual orientation, and lifestyle. The vast majority of us do not
live in separate homogeneous enclaves, each with its own common values.
The Federalist orientation that informed our Constitution provided no effective way of creating
arenas for the orderly and reasoned discussion of our commonalities and our differences because
it assumes electoral representation, recognizing only state governments and a federal government.
Our local governments are creatures of each state and tend to fall prey to the same assumption
that operates at the federal level—that elected representatives can represent a large and diverse
10 The American Review of Public Administration 41(1)

constituency. This has led to an ever increasing centralization of authority controlled by elected
officials who cannot possibly represent the diversity of views in American society.12 The result
is burgeoning grassroots movements reflecting that heterogeneity that is institutionally discon-
nected from governmental authority and increasingly alienated from it.
Some would deal with this disaffection by seeking to impose a set of prescribed moral norms
on the entire nation. For example, social conservatives such as the so-called Christian Evangelical
Right would have us all adhering to their version of Protestant morality—eschewing the use of
alcohol, prohibiting the performance of much of the popular music, censoring movies that depict
any semblance of sexuality, castigating those whose sexual identity is homosexual or bisexual,
some renouncing dancing, viewing children born out of wedlock as illegitimate, making abortion
illegal under any circumstances, stringently limiting the circulation of certain offensive books by
public libraries, not only prohibiting the teaching of evolution in the schools, but also seeking to
impose creationism or intelligent design on all students, adopting dress codes, and on and on.
There are other such “would be” moral communities who propose to deal with diversity by impos-
ing their moral code, the extreme expression of which is the militia movement, including both
neo-Nazis and super patriots.
This resort to the imposition of moral community can be found all around the world from ethnic
cleansing in Bosnia to the Islamic fundamentalists of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan,
to authoritarian regimes such as the People’s Republic of China and North Korea, to utopian
communities of various sorts. Needless to say, this is not what one would advocate for democratic
societies. The imposition of moral community on heterogeneous urban societies tends to stifle
human development, squelch freedom, wither creativity, evoke conflict, and dull the mind. They
create the appearance of order, trust, stability, and commitment to the common good, but neither
do they create or tolerate lively inquiring minds or freedom of belief, nor do they produce much
creativity. In diverse societies the stress cracks appear sooner or later when moral community is
imposed on them.

Ethical Community
Unlike moral community, the concept of “ethical community” takes seriously the relativity of cul-
tures, the lack of an encompassing common tradition, the absence of foundational beliefs and universal
moral norms, and the diversity of contemporary urban society. It assumes that values and ethical
principles lie at the heart of community, but further assumes that these must be freely chosen or
subsequently examined, understood, interpreted in particular situations, reinterpreted from time to
time, and agreed to by its members if expectations are to be imposed on everyone through the force
of rules and laws. Ethical community must be constructed socially, not in a single meeting, or even
in several, but over the course of years and lives—a never ending process of community building.
Community as a given is largely extinct, thus requiring community as a self-conscious work of
human art, as Lappe and Du Bois suggest with respect to involved community as contrasted with
devolved community. Creating involved communities is, in large part, a process of ethical reflection
and democratic deliberation among those seeking community.13 Deliberative democracy, under these
conditions, becomes an essential process for sharing ethical perspectives and developing consensus
for individual and collective action, however temporary, limited, and tentative that may be.
Assumed in my argument, is that ethics is a process one step removed from specific action and
problem solving. It involves the examination of the values and principles that lie behind and
beneath courses of conduct. Ethics focuses on the usually taken-for-granted normative assump-
tions from which we derive specific moral rules to guide our action. “Do unto others as you would
have them do unto you,” for example, is a moral rule used as a criterion for right action in concrete
situations. But, it is rooted in some assumptions about fairness, equality, respect for others, or in
Cooper 11

underlying instrumental beliefs in reciprocity captured by another moral rule, “You scratch my
back and I will scratch yours.” Ethical reflection and discourse goes to the broader principles,
such as justice, beneficence, veracity, prudence, respect for human dignity, and the public interest,
as well as to rights claims such as privacy, freedoms of various types (speech, religion, assembly,
the press), and due process under the law.
Building ethical community requires engagement among people seeking community through
this kind of reflection, analysis, and deliberation. An ethical community is not one in which we
all necessarily agree about the meaning of justice, or the boundaries of our freedoms, or the extent
of our obligation to the common good. Rather, it is a community in which we discuss those things
as we work out the interdependent areas of our lives—sometimes referred to as the “public”
aspects of life. It is in these public realms that our common role as “citizens” comes into play,
then obligating us to engage each other about what should be expected of all.
The implication here is that there are other relatively independent dimensions of our existence
about which we must agree to differ without attempting to impose a single set of norms on all. These
might include matters of lifestyle, sexual identity and preference, diet, religion, political philosophy,
music, art, parenting, occupation, and the like. It is only when practices in any of these or other areas
of life impinge significantly on those pursued by others that they should become matters for public
policy discussion about norms to guide society as a whole, or particular parts of it.
There is no assumption here that we will all become abstract theorists, fussing over the fine
points of ethical theory as is the propensity of scholars, but it is assumed that we can all become
practical applied ethicists. In the course of grappling with specific issues in our common life, we
can push the discussion beyond epithets, accusations, and narrow self-interests to consider what
general principles and values are implicit in various alternative courses of action under consider-
ation. We can attempt to avoid dealing in a disjointed, ad hoc fashion with public policy issues
related to such areas of public concern as social welfare, health care, global warming, immigration,
education, capital punishment, defense, law enforcement, zoning, and gangs. Instead, we can
consciously connect them to broader principles of equity, beneficence, honesty, and liberty as well
as rights such as freedom of speech, privacy, and dignity with as much intensity and vigor as we
do generally in relating policies to financial costs and resources.
In that ongoing give and take we can become more self-aware, more cognizant of our similari-
ties and differences, and more attentive to our interdependence. In so doing, we may be able to
evolve some consensus about a set of core public values for our role as citizens while respecting
our private differences. Thus, a conversation lies at the heart of building an ethical community, a
commitment to dialogue among relative equals. However, although equality is the norm for
membership in the conversation, merit must be the norm for the validity of ideas. One’s argument
should be accepted because it is more logical, fitting, meaningful, and supportive of certain values
and principles, more conducive to human well-being; not because of differences in wealth, status,
reputation, or education.
Impossible, you say? Well, maybe not entirely so. One striking example from the technology
of the late 20th century can be found in the anonymity of the Internet and the way in which it can
strip away social class, age, and other criteria of status. The coastal city of Santa Monica in
the Los Angeles area had the most interactive municipal website in the nation for almost a decade.
It was called the Public Electronic Network (PEN).14 PEN operated at any given time about
200 discussion groups dealing with various public policy and social issues among the people of
Santa Monica. For example, the problem of the growing number of homeless people flocking to
that attractive seaside community was one of the more interesting and lively ones.
In research that has been done on PEN, a frequent comment among participants was that the
anonymity of electronic participation had unanticipated effects. It allowed some to participate
who otherwise would have been prevented from voicing their views or whose opinions would
12 The American Review of Public Administration 41(1)

have been discounted out of hand. Some were astonished to learn that one of the more perceptive
participants in that conversation was a school child. Others expressed surprise on discovering that
one of the more constructive contributors to the homeless discussion was a homeless person
himself. He had logged on from one of the many public PEN terminals in libraries, community
centers, senior citizen centers, schools, and other public buildings. In this case, the technology of
the Internet had the leveling effect of rendering irrelevant one’s age or dress; only the ideas counted
in the conversation. It is also true, however, that unless such semi-anonymous electronic com-
munication is effectively facilitated, the opposite kind of exchange may result. It may deteriorate
into the kind of harsh interaction that happens all too often in unmoderated Internet debate.
In recent years, an extensive body of literature has emerged on deliberative democracy.15 Its
advocates have developed a wide array of techniques and processes. One of the more noteworthy
of these is America Speaks, headed by Carolyn Lukensmeyer, which does large-scale deliberations
ranging from several hundred for the Washington, D.C. budget development day to 5,000 for
determining what to do with the area formerly occupied by the World Trade Towers in New York
City (Lukensmeyer, 2008). America Speaks employs a sophisticated combination of technology,
human theme facilitators, and direct face-to-face interaction to create deliberative processes among
large groups of participants either in the same location or in various sites around the nation. Other
techniques include “Learning and Design Forums” (Kathi & Cooper, 2008), “Deliberative Polling,”
“Choice Work Dialogues,” “Citizens Juries,” “Consensus Conferences,” and “Study Circles” among
others.16 One must note, however, that public deliberation advocates have paid little attention to
the ethical dimensions of the processes they support. That is an important missing dimension in
development of deliberative techniques for policy making and governance.
The public conversation necessary to build ethical community can be achieved neither solely
through social engineering by a body of experts nor by elected representatives alone; it is most
fundamentally the work of the people ourselves if we are to build ethical communities. It is the
citizenry who must find ways of yielding preconceptions and prejudices to mutual influence, per-
suasion, and reciprocity. There is no intention here to suggest or imply that experts have no role to
play in the building of an ethical community. They do, indeed, but it is more one of informing the
conversation among the citizenry than one of replacing it with pronouncements from on high.
Policy experts become an essential resource for the community dialogue, not a final authority.
It is important to define these roles clearly because recent research shows that lay people and
experts bring different concerns to policy deliberation. The Kettering Foundation has been focus-
ing its efforts and resources on action research on the involvement of the citizenry in public
decision making. Its Public Interest Series of publications, linked to a network of face-to-face
National Issues Forums around the nation, some years ago demonstrated that lay people can
engage in meaningful and constructive discussion of the kind I have been describing—one dealing
with complex technical and ethical dimensions.17
Furthermore, the Kettering study on Meaningful Chaos: How People Form Relationships With
Public Concerns is particularly interesting in illuminating how citizens think through important
public issues as contrasted with the approach typical of experts (The Harwood Group, 1993). Lay
citizens engage policy deliberation from a much more multifaceted holistic perspective, while
experts tend to focus more narrowly and specifically on a particular policy problem and a set of
proposals. That is, ordinary people do not want to deal only with the technical considerations of
toxic waste management in a specific site, but generally try to relate such an issue to aesthetic
impacts on their neighborhoods, symbolic implications of locating a dump in a particular place,
effects on the whole of their lives—education of the children, health, property values, implications
for the future of their communities, alternatives for better use of the land, how they will feel about
their lives with such a facility nearby, and what it may do to their network of human relationships.
Cooper 13

Lay people raise ethical questions such as distributive justice, trust, prudence, and veracity, not
in the technical jargon of philosophers, but using common parlance. They wonder whether such
dumps are distributed fairly among the populace or whether they are being asked to accept one
because of their racial or economic status. They want to talk about how wise a judgment it would
be, all things considered; how truthful experts are, and how valid their assessment of risks, costs,
and benefits—how much they can be trusted.
Experts, on the other hand, tend to view such questions and concerns as the uninformed ram-
bling typical of citizens who have not the discipline, knowledge, and skill to focus on a specific
problem that has to be solved. They know it has to be solved within a limited budget and by a
specific deadline. Generally, they are more concerned with the technical dimensions of the problem
and getting it resolved as efficiently as possible with the minimum of conflict and political tur-
bulence. Experts are extremely reluctant to wander off into what they perceive to be the swamp
of ethics, aesthetics, and a multitude of other worries presented by ordinary citizens. They quickly
become impatient with this kind of discussion because it is seen as an impediment to be overcome
rather than an essential part of the people’s role in governance. They do not often understand the
community-building process or, more specifically, the building of ethical communities. Nor do
they comprehend well the significance of those processes for democratic governance, especially
in diverse societies.
None of this should be taken to imply that technical experts have no role to play in the public
policy process; that would be ludicrous in the extreme. Rather, it is to suggest that their contribu-
tions represent only one important part of the equation, not the whole. Deliberation by the people
in the inclusive fashion described previously is the means for building ethical community which,
in turn, is the necessary basis for democratic governance. As such, it ought to be respected however
messy it may seem to the experts.
On the other hand, citizens need to experience the discipline of expert knowledge; they need
to learn from it. They must come to the realization that they ignore technical advice at their own
peril, that if they choose to devalue or reject expert opinion they must do so responsibly. They
must be prepared to accept the consequences of their decisions. That citizens are able to do so is
born out by another body of research undertaken by the Kettering Foundation, some of it with the
assistance of Daniel Yankelovich (1991), whose book, Coming to Public Judgment, is a highly
significant source of insight on this work.
After many years in the public polling business, Yankelovich (1991) has turned his attention
to how we can develop volatile uninformed public opinion into more considered, stable, and
informed public judgment. He has been able to identify a series of stages the public must work
through in this process and techniques public leaders can use to facilitate it.18 He indicates quite
clearly that much of the work to be done is around conflicting values and ethical commitments.
Yankelovich’s work is well grounded in experimental research.
Thus, building an ethical community requires that members of the community be involved in
a conversation among themselves that is finally rooted in a set of principles and values; good
public policy requires that the conversation be informed and chastened by expert judgment. In
Creating Public Value, Mark Moore (1995) describes this as the “public deliberation” alternative
to representative government. He finds representative government working through policy experts
to be problematic for contemporary urban society.19 He asserts that,

So far, the techniques of political management have been narrowly focused. They have
made influencing formal policy decisions the main objective of political management.
Consequently, they have focused attention on the relatively small number of people in posi-
tions of formal authority. (p. 179)
14 The American Review of Public Administration 41(1)

Moore (1995) argues that “In this view government becomes a way for citizens to avoid making
the changes in their perspectives and actions that are required to solve important collective prob-
lems.” He continues,

Instead of encouraging conflicting groups to reach their own accommodations, government

policy has fostered reliance on the government to arbitrate disputes. Instead of encouraging
thousands of individuals to work on collective problems, government has taken all the
responsibility for solving the problems—even when it has no powerful solutions. (p. 179)

The result, according to Moore is “a decision that satisfies no one except the government officials
who made the decision.”
Moore contrasts this orientation with “public deliberation,” which maintains the necessity for
opposing forces to confront one another directly in order to learn about the interests and percep-
tions of other citizens. He suggests that it is only through such a participatory process that citizens
come to grips with their differences, integrate, and synthesize conflicting claims and “learn the
full set of values at stake in the decision” (Moore, 1995, 180ff). It is also, according to Moore, an
opportunity for creative solutions.20 Yankelovich’s (1991) empirical experiments in moving citizens
from public opinion to public judgment provide support for Moore’s normative argument.
If the intention is not to dismiss the public official and policy expert from public deliberation,
how might we understand their roles? In general terms, it amounts to expanding their role definitions
to include “educator” and “facilitator” along with “elected representative” and “technical expert.”21
The contention here is that elected representatives cannot really represent the diverse and large
populations most have as constituents, but can more effectively function as facilitators of public
deliberation and educators about the constraints under which government operates, and finally as
legally authoritative confirmers of the public consensus. Similarly, technical policy experts cannot
effectively form and implement public policies without the lay knowledge that citizens bring to the
policy process. Therefore, policy experts need to view their roles as informers and facilitators of
public deliberation, bringing their expert knowledge to bear on the lay knowledge of citizens.
Yankelovich and Furth (2006) have reported on related empirical research they have conducted
on the role of “civic leaders,” including “business leaders, heads of service organizations, prominent
individuals, community activists, university presidents, religious leaders . . .” and other similar
people of stature in communities. These key citizens are often looked to as intermediaries to work
with public officials by helping create arenas for deliberation and contributing their informed judg-
ments to the process. Thus, Yankelovich (1991) has begun to conceive multiple roles for different
kinds of public leadership as important ingredients in constructive democratic deliberation.
If these revised roles were to become generally accepted, what are the implications for the
academy, the professional schools, and programs that educate people for public service as admin-
istrators, policy experts, and elected officials? This is a tough question to address because so many
professional vested interests currently have locks on curricula, either in whole or in part. These
interests are all based mainly on the now outmoded role identity for public officials of “technical
expert” inherited from the American Progressive reformers of a century ago. The National Asso-
ciation of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration (NASPAA), the main accrediting body
for academic institutions offering degrees in these areas, has talked for several decades about the
importance of ethics but has never been able to bring itself to require even a single course devoted
to professional ethics for the Master of Public Administration (MPA) degree. Instead, it vaguely
requires some kind of treatment of ethics in the curriculum of each program it accredits. NASPAA
and its member institutions would never consider dealing with public finance or public manage-
ment in that fragmented, hit or miss, fashion, but they assume that a complex subject like ethics,
a subject they generally espouse as important, can be adequately addressed through a class session
Cooper 15

here and there in various courses. The result tends to be an incoherent, fragmented, and superficial
treatment of ethics that sends the message to students that it is not really a topic worthy of signifi-
cant concern.
The justification for a free-standing course on administrative ethics can be established in two
ways: (a) the need for comprehensive, systematic, integrated, and sustained treatment of a complex
subject like ethics that can only be accomplished in a dedicated course, and (b) empirical evidence
of the greater effectiveness of such a course over dealing with ethics in relationship to a broad
range of substantive areas in multiple courses. There is general agreement among scholars of
administrative ethics on the first justification. That consensus is based on their experience of
studying and teaching ethics, and seeing how inadequate the treatment of the subject is when one
adopts the approach of only trying to insert it into other courses in the curriculum. It is simply
impossible to provide the kind of comprehensive and integrated coverage of a complex topic such
as administrative ethics by expecting colleagues with little or no training in ethics to teach some
aspect of the subject in a sophisticated manner. Furthermore, to be sure of adequate coverage of
the subject in this fashion, even if a significant knowledge of ethics was held by enough faculty
members, it would require a considerable amount of curricular coordination by someone in an
administrative role with substantial training in ethics. This kind of coordination would be extremely
difficult and costly because courses are taught by different instructors from time to time and
sometimes there are multiple sections of a particular course.
The position generally held by administrative ethicists is summed up well in the written remarks
of Carole Jurkiewicz, former chair of the Section on Ethics of the American Society for Public
Administration (ASPA), at a session on “Achieving Ethical Competence” delivered at the 2009
annual conference of the NASPAA:

To say ethics can be taught by any and all professors suggests it is not a distinct area of study;
that no qualifications are necessary, despite no evidence to support this position. To this,
ethicists take umbrage. If all professors are capable of teaching ethics, then certainly all
professors can teach budgeting by incorporating it into their courses, or economics, or human
resources, or program evaluation, etc. This becomes absurd, of course, rendering all expertise
null and all instruction generic. Budgeting professors, as an example, are no more qualified
to teach ethics as an ethics professor is to teach budgeting. Each is a distinct and separate
area of study replete with theory, research methodology, application, and implementation
(Jurkiewicz, 2009).22

Thus, when programs in public administration and public affairs persist in teaching ethics only
as modules in other courses, it is difficult to reach any other conclusion than that ethics is simply
not highly valued in their curricula. As in budgeting, what is actually supported reflects the true
priorities of organizations in spite of what is espoused to the contrary.
With respect to the second justification for not requiring a free-standing course in ethics, it
would be manifestly unfair to require of the field of administrative ethics a test not imposed on
other fields in public administration and public affairs. Do we really have empirical studies of
how treating organization theory, public finance, policy analysis, human resources management,
budgeting, or quantitative methods can only be done in free-standing courses, and not as modules
in other courses? No, we depend on the knowledge and experience of those with expertise in these
areas to determine how best to teach their bodies of knowledge and skills. There is no good reason
for treating the field of administrative ethics any differently.
That said, Carole Jurkiewicz and Kenneth Nichols (2002) have researched this question in one
study, “Ethics Education in the MPA Curriculum: What Difference Does it Make?” Their study
of 203 public administrators across the nation who hold an MPA degree concluded that those who
16 The American Review of Public Administration 41(1)

had taken a semester-long class in ethics evidenced a significantly more acute ability to perceive
ethical problems and reported acting in ways to uphold ethical conduct significantly more fre-
quently that those who had not had such a course.
In “The Influence of Pedagogical Style on Students’ Level of Ethical Reasoning,” Jurkiewicz
(2002) studied the effectiveness of a particular pedagogical method. She reports on a decade of
research on her own ethics classes in which she employed the confronting or challenging approach
to teaching ethics advocated by Lawrence Kohlberg, known for his distinguished body of research
on cognitive moral development. This approach is designed to raise the students’ approach to think-
ing about ethical problems to the highest level focusing on the underlying principles involved in an
ethical problem. The importance of this kind of reasoning had already been established in a study
several years earlier by Jurkiewicz and Massey (1998) that found that effective nonprofit executives
exhibited substantially higher levels of principled thinking than ineffective executives.
Beyond these studies, there is compelling evidence that graduates of the top 13 public policy
and administration schools studied by Paul Light (1999) viewed ethics education as much more
important than was reflected in the courses offered and required by the programs from which they
graduated. The sample included 1,000 respondents from graduating class cohorts in 1973 and
1974, 1978 and 1979, 1983, 1988, and 1993 (Light, 1999, p. 143). In their responses to telephone
interviews based on a structured survey, the highest rated skill “considered very important for
success” for their current job was “maintaining ethical standards” (75% to 89% across the federal,
state, and local levels of government; and the private and nonprofit sectors for an average of 82%;
Light, 1999, p. 110). However, when asked what their schools were “very helpful in teaching”
only 48% selected “maintaining ethical standards.” This difference amounted to a gap between
skills they considered very important to do the job and what they were taught in their schools of
34% (p. 116). These findings clearly suggest that schools of public affairs and administration
should take seriously the possibility of including a required course on ethics.
Similarly, democratic deliberation and engagement between citizens and government—often
the focus of professional conferences, associational declarations, and academic mission statements,
and often included in strategic plans—is seldom central to academic curricula. Typically, one finds,
at best, a session or two on democratic theory and/or citizen participation, but no core requirements
for courses on the democratic responsibilities of the public administrator and techniques for facili-
tating public deliberation.
If the faculties of academic programs in public administration believe that building ethical
community is a central element of an enlightened democratic society, they will need to significantly
revise their curricula, and that will almost certainly entail requiring more courses. However, just
as citizens tend to want more public services without a raise in taxes, academic programs tend
want to be viewed as forward thinking and relevant to a changing world, but resist increasing
course load requirements. Adding three courses to the typical MPA degree program would amount
to far less courageous and visionary action than that undertaken by the Progressives in the early
20th century: one course each in “Public Administrative Ethics and Competencies,” “Democratic
Theory and Methods for Civic Engagement,” and “Conflict Management and Consensus Build-
ing.” The reasons for suggesting the first two should be obvious by this point, but the need for
the third may require some explanation.
Managing conflict is an inherent part of the administrative role and even more important when
engaging diverse communities. Managing conflict is also the third most highly rated skill as “very
important for success in the current job” in the previously cited study by Light (1999), by an
average of 62% of respondents across the levels of government and the three sectors (p. 110).
However, only 28% of the respondents reported that their schools had been very helpful in teach-
ing this set of skills and knowledge, creating a gap of 34% between needed and delivered profes-
sional education (Light, 1999, p. 116).
Cooper 17

Conclusion: Steps Toward Building an Ethical Community

By way of summarizing my position and concluding the argument, I shall offer the following
specific steps that need to be taken seriously if we are to build ethical communities:
1. Focus on the interdependent areas of our lives. In contemporary urban societies, we need
to focus our attention on the nexus of ethical community as lying in the areas in which our public
conduct inescapably involves the potential conflicts between our ethical perspectives and those
of others. We would do this by identifying those public policy problems that affect large numbers
of our citizens and evoke significantly different alternative policy proposals. We dare not try to
impose or achieve a common standard over the diverse aspects of our lives that fall largely into
private arenas. Down that road lies culture war and social disintegration. However, in the public
areas of lives, where the conduct of some people significantly effects the lives of others, develop-
ing the ability to engage our differences thoughtfully through deliberation is essential and where
we should focus our ethical community building efforts.
2. Make ethical deliberation central to our conversation. The conversations that build com-
munity are those that go beyond superficial conflicts among specific concrete proposals for public
policies and programs. It is only when we inquire of each other about our underlying ethical com-
mitments and find ways of really trying to understand these differences that we can get beyond
stereotyping, name calling, and prejudicial characterizations of those who differ. Instead of readily
assuming that one who holds a different viewpoint must be irrational, ignorant, perverted, wrong-
headed, or subhuman, struggling to understand the other perspective may turn up reasons one can
respect, if not accept. Respect for the opinions of others is the first step toward willingness to
compromise, or to search for win-win, rather than win-lose, solutions.
3. Public officials must rethink their roles. They need to realize they cannot truly represent a
highly diverse citizenry and, therefore, cease understanding themselves as the final authorities
on, and arbiters of, the complex problems of the day. However, this does not imply a diminution
of the role of public officials in any sense; in some sense it elevates the role. In general, I would
argue that officials need to start thinking of their penultimate responsibility as one of providing
national defense, or law enforcement, or public health, or education, and their ultimate responsi-
bility as being builders of ethical community to support democratic governance. Both elected
officials and career technical experts have subroles to play in this process. Elected officials need
to start viewing themselves less as the decision makers and more as leader/facilitators of the public
conversation, with the authority to legitimize legally a final decision if one can be defined. Tech-
nical experts have a crucial role as participants in the conversation with an obligation to provide
information to discipline and inform public discussion. Box (1998, 2007), Moore (1995), Reich
(1988), and Cooper (1991) have been previously cited on this perspective.23
4. Public officials need to create arenas for the conversation discussed in Step 1 about the
interdependent areas of life in modern society and policy problems related to them. This should
include electronic, written, and face-to-face forums. Electronic forums such as PEN have enormous
potential that is yet to be realized. Face-to-face forums, of the kind conducted by the Kettering
Foundation, which are sometimes linked together electronically through video-conferencing tech-
niques, also ought to be used. Written but anonymous conversations of the kind produced through
Delphi exercises show significant promise, with the Yosemite National Park General Plan process
as a noteworthy national example.24 At the local level, the creation of formal neighborhood councils
that become official participants in the municipal public policy process have been used in such
American cities as Los Angeles, California; Portland, Oregon; Dayton, Ohio; Birmingham,
Alabama; St. Paul, Minnesota; and San Antonio, Texas. Berry, Portney, and Thomson (1993) have
studied the experience of these five cities and reported their findings in The Rebirth of Urban
Democracy. Inspired by this research, the City of Los Angeles established a system of neighborhood
18 The American Review of Public Administration 41(1)

councils through its new charter adopted by the voters in 1999. It now has 90 such councils distrib-
uted citywide that were organized by the people of each area and certified by the city Board of
Neighborhood Commissioners. These are sometimes turbulent arenas that provide opportunities for
people to construct communities throughout the city that go beyond small homogeneous enclaves.25
Another kind of example would be the interesting and innovative work of America Speaks, which
uses technology to conduct large-scale deliberations about important public problems.26
A rich body of theoretical and empirical work on how to create these arenas and deal with col-
lective action problems in a community-oriented way has been created by the Nobel Laureate in
economics for 2009, Elinor Ostrom. An adequate treatment of her monumental research and pub-
lished work is far beyond the scope of this article, but suffice it to say that she has persuasively
argued that there is evidence from evolutionary psychology, sociology, and experimental research
supporting her assertion that “Individuals inherit an acute sensitivity for learning norms that increase
their own long-term benefits when confronting social dilemmas with others who have learned and
value similar norms” (Ostrom,1998, p. 10).27 The central norms for community building and col-
lective action are reciprocity, concern for reputation, and trust. There is much to be learned from
Ostrom’s work on self-governance in the use of common pool resources that illuminates the process
of constructing deliberative arenas. From her research, one essential element is that empirical
evidence drawn from the experiences of common pool resource management demonstrates that
people can make “credible commitments” based on “covenants” of mutual trust (Ostrom, Walker,
& Gardner, 1992). An interesting comparison of how credible commitment has been addressed
from the fields of organizational behavior and rational choice has been developed by Robertson
and Tang (1995) and applied to the specific problem of school-based management.
5. All parties (lay citizens, civic leaders, elected officials, and technical experts) need to recognize
that the process of building an ethical community in today’s world is fraught with conflict that
cannot be avoided, but desperately needs to be engaged. Dealing with the complex array of values,
moral codes, and ethical perspectives found in a diverse urban society is a rough and tumble, risky
business. It is neither a pink tea party nor a sandbox for children who count on mommy or daddy
to maintain order. There is no mommy or daddy in that sense, and any public official foolish enough
to attempt such a role is not likely to fare well. What is called for is neither paternalism nor mater-
nalism but the courage to embrace and engage conflict, along with some training in conflict man-
agement, and public participation techniques. Many lack the former; most lack the latter, thus the
importance of including in the public administration curriculum a course on conflict management
and consensus building as suggested above.
6. Long-term engagement is essential. The social construction of ethical community will not
happen quickly; it is the work of at least a generation or two. In the United States, we have come
to expect things to happen within one term of office of the mayor, the governor, or the president.
We have become impatient with long-term solutions. Students tend to view anything that cannot
be done in a year or two as lying in the realm of the ideal and beyond practicality. My response
to them is that they are the ones who are idealists and impractical. Contemporary urban society
has been a long time in the making and the replacement of tradition or the imposition of moral
norms with ethical community requires vision, modesty about one’s own contribution to the task,
and lots of commitment. I am not a naïve fool; I began my professional career as a community
organizer in East Harlem in New York City and what is now known as the Pico-Union area of
Los Angeles. I know something about how difficult my proposals are to achieve or even approxi-
mate, but it is time for some grand ideas that will motivate us toward a vision of democracy in a
highly diverse multicultural society. We need the kind of big vision for our time that was held by
the Progressives for theirs, which they unfolded over three or four decades, and has been further
developed over another 60 to 70 years.
Cooper 19

7. Finally, for the academic readers, social science needs to revise its own self-understanding
and role in the building of ethical community. Rather than continuing a futile emulation of the
natural sciences (some call this “physics envy”) with an overweening commitment to too simple
an understanding of objectivity, a fear of subjectivity, and a rejection of involvement in social
change, social scientists need to view their role similar to that advocated by John Dewey in the
1920s and Robert Bellah more recently. In The Public and Its Problems, Dewey (1927) argued
that in modern industrial and technological society it is often impossible for the public to know
how it is being affected by the actions of government, business, and private associations. For
publics to form and influence government, Dewey saw it as necessary for the social sciences to
orient themselves more practically around illuminating these kinds of problems for the public—to
engage the public in a conversation about positive and negative impacts on society by the actions
of key players in shaping the society.
In “Social Science as Practical Reason” Bellah (1982) challenges what he refers to as the domi-
nation of “techne” in our thinking about the social sciences and calls for a more public orientation
of our work oriented around informing a public conversation. In Habits of the Heart, Bellah (1985)
carries this forward and lays out a role for the social sciences similar to that of Dewey, referring
to it as one focused on public philosophy. That is, playing the kind of role described above for
technical experts as participants in the public conversation by providing information needed by
the lay citizenry to inform public deliberation—to discipline and illuminate it.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this
article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article.

Notes
  1. For an introduction to this debate see Amitai Etzioni, Andrew Volmert, and Elanit Rothschild (2004).
  2. This implies a kind of traditional closely related, place-based community referred to by Tonnies (2001)
as “gemeinschaft” as contrasted with the more impersonal relationships found in gesellschaft in modern
urban societies.
  3. See Selznick (1992, pp. 357-365) for a detailed discussion of this approach to community as a variable.
  4. This discussion of community as a variable implies the existence of a continuum of social relationships
from community on one end to enclave on the other, but developing that continuum is beyond the scope
of this article. The elements that vary along the continuum are suggested here.
  5. For a more detailed discussion of this general definition, see John W. Gardner (1991).
  6. This paragraph was taken from Terry L. Cooper (1991, p. 153).
  7. Some portions of this paragraph are taken from Cooper (1991).
  8. See also on this point: Amitai Etzioni (1988) and Alfie Kohn (1990).
  9. This is the central theme and problem developed by Bellah et al. (1993).
10. The essays in this volume provide insight into the Federalist perspective. See also, Alexander Hamilton,
James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist papers. New York, NY: New American Library, 1961.
11. I have developed this argument in some detail in An Ethic of Citizenship for Public Administration
(Cooper, 1991). Democratization here refers mainly to Constitutional amendments and legislation that
have provided voting rights to all men who are citizens, then all women citizens, lowered the voting age
to 18 years, abolished the poll tax, and established the direct election of the U.S. Senate. The arguments
for these reflect values more consistent with the Antifederalist than the Federalist tradition.
20 The American Review of Public Administration 41(1)

12. As of the 2000 census, each member of the House had to represent an average of 646,946 people. Even
at the local level, each member of the city council in a large city like Los Angeles represents approxi-
mately 260,000 people.
13. The assumptions outlined here are generally consistent with some of the postmodernist philosophical per-
spectives that assume no foundational truth, no truly objective knowledge, nor any absolute reality, although
I do not explicitly identify myself as a postmodernist. For a discussion of that viewpoint in relation to public
administration, see Charles J. Fox and Hugh T. Miller (1996). They argue that a substitute for foundational
truth and objective reality is the social construction of social reality through deliberative processes.
14. The URL for the PEN website was http://pen.ci.santa-monica.ca.us/pen/. An article about PEN may be
found at http://www.mckeown.net/PENaddress.html
15. The most comprehensive overview on public deliberation techniques and venues may be found in
Abigail Williamson and Archon Fung (2005).
16. For an overview of these particular techniques see Lukensmeyer and Torres (2006).
17. The National Issues Forum has now become an independent organization and may be found at http://
www.nifi.org/index.aspx. The Kettering Foundation has now developed a more complex array of public
deliberation techniques and arenas, which may be found at http://www.kettering.org/.
18. Yankelovich identifies three stages: consciousness raising, working through, and resolution (both cogni-
tive and moral). All three involve reconciling conflicting values and ethical commitments, as well as
conflicts of information.
19. Mary Parker Follet (1913/1965) in The New State argued along the same lines. She attached the
American Progressive Reform Movement for focusing its efforts on trying to improve the electoral
process of representative government rather than working to build more participatory democratic
structures at the grassroots.
20. For a wide-ranging discussion of the theoretical assumptions behind this perspective see Robert Reich (1988).
21. See the previously cited work by Moore (1995) and Reich (1988); see also Richard C. Box (1998),
Citizen Governance (especially pp. 142-167), and Box’s (2007) edited volume Democracy and Public
Administration especially the last chapter by Box on “The Public Service Practitioner as Agent of Social
Change.” See also the author’s (Box, 1991) An Ethic of Citizenship for Public Administration, especially
the last two chapters—Chapter 5 on “The Citizen Administrator: The Public Administrator as Virtuous
Citizen” and Chapter 6, “The Public Obligations of the Public Administrator.”
22. “An Immodest Proposal on Ethical Competency in the Public Service,” written, but unpublished pre-
sentation of Jurkiewicz (2009). She is one of the leading administrative ethics scholars who has done
considerable published research on the teaching of ethics. She is one of the leading researchers using
cognitive moral development theory developed originally by Lawrence Kohlberg. She is the Woman’s
Hospital Distinguished Professor of Healthcare Management and the John W. Dupuy Endowed Professor
at Louisiana State University, E.J. Ourso College of Business in the Public Administration Institute.
23. Anticipating the objection that public administration scholars have no business suggesting how elected
officials should understand their role, suffice it to say that a concern of that kind appears to reflect a
long discredited dichotomy between politics and administration. It is not possible to undertake serious
consideration of reconstructing the administrative role without also reflecting on the political role.
24. The highly sensitive General Plan for Yosemite National Park in central California was developed through
a nationwide participatory process that began with written questionnaires keyed to four alternatives for
the park, became an iterative Delphi exercise, and concluded with 40 public hearings. The result was very
broad support for the plan rooted in a set of values and ethical obligations. The acid test was that no one
has sued the government over this plan, a very predictable outcome in most such projects.
25. See the website of the USC Civic Engagement Initiative for some of the research conducted there
through its Neighborhood Participation Project: http://www.usc-cei.org/. See also the website of the
Los Angeles Department of Neighborhood Empowerment: http://www.lacityneighborhoods.com/page2.
cfm?doc=home and that of the Citywide Alliance of Neighborhood Councils: http://www.allncs.org/
26. See website at http://www.americaspeaks.org/.
Cooper 21

27. This article provides a good introduction to Ostrom’s (1998) work that is developed and amplified in
subsequent works.

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Bio
Terry L. Cooper is The Maria B. Crutcher Professor in Citizenship and Democratic Values in the School
of Policy, Planning, and Development at the University of Southern California. His major work has been in
public ethics and civic engagement.