Various Flashcards
What were the elements of Watergate/impeachment proceedings against Nixon? In other words, what activities were considered by investigators and Congress, starting with the Watergate break-in.
domestic surveillance – “plumbers”
Intelligence operations related to the 1972 presidential election
Watergate break in and cover up
Nixon’s personal finances
Campaign finance abuses include illegal corp. contributions, selling ambassadorships
political use of executive agencies such as the IRS to go after enemies
Other misconduct
Who was Jack Abramoff
a lobbyist who went to jail for fraud, tax evasion, and corruption & cheated his Native American Clients out of millions of dollars. He won over dozens of Congressmen by showering them with gifts to get them to vote favorably on bills his clients wanted. His clients made substantial donations to lawmakers’ campaigns. He said the best way to “buy” an office was by offering the chief of staff a job at his firm once they left the congressman’s office. He had a very strong influence in at least 100 offices, specifically Tom DeLay and Bob Nay. Considered himself moral bc he donated million of dollars but then admitted what he did was immoral and wrong.
Abramoff’s opinion on reform
He said that the reforms are not very effective and the only way to truely prevent bribery and corruption is by removing the revolving door and stopping congress members and their staff from ever working as lobbyists.
Criticisms of ethics laws
1) The ethics reform measures are essentially devices for trying to inhibit and expose conflicts of financial interest and have little effect in establishing the higher components of ethics that proponents desire
2) Ethics reform creates high expectations that cannot be fulfilled
3) Aims to prevent corruption, not to inspire high-level ethics
4) Bc ethics is so complex, it is impossible to teach it to a large number of people
The anti-corruption agenda can
compromise the administrative efficiency
The reform effect has forced a
weakening of administrative authority to the detriment of decisiveness
There is considerable evidence that the pursuit of strong limits on corruption
may directly or indirectly constrain administrators in other aspects of their role that are essential to effective public management
There is no way to measure accurately the extent of corruption and thus
no way to ascertain whether the anti-corruption project has had the intended result
The goal of ethics reform appears to be
to create a corps of public officials who seem to be free of all entangling personal interests, and therefore completely disinterested (at least in their official capacity), and to create a means of reassuring the public on an on-going basis that processes exist to maintain and document this degree of purity.
concept of enforced disinterestedness
appears to be in conflict with some important expectations and understandings about how governance in a democracy must work
Competitive particularism
a regime in which rulers who monopolize power and treat the state as their own patrimony are succeeded by competing political groups or parties that practice a similarly nonuniversal allocation of public resources based on patronage, nepotism, and the exchange of favors
Ethical universalism
Equality before the law, Citizens treated fairly and equally by the government
Normative Constraints on Corruption
Values, Social Capital, Civil Society, Civic Culture
Values
A prevailing societal norm of ethical universalism based on values such as fairness and honesty
Social Capital
a widespread habit of engaging in formal or informal collective action around shared interests, purposes, and values
