Explaining Self-Interested Behavior of Public-Spirited Policy Makers

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Zamir, Eyal; Sulitzeanu-Kenan, Raanan
• 署名单位: Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Hebrew University of Jerusalem
• 刊物名称: PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0033-3352
• DOI: 10.1111/puar.12825
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 579-592
• 关键词: POLITICAL-ECONOMY; MORAL DISENGAGEMENT; Unethical behavior; motivational bases; BAD THINGS; CHOICE; ETHICS; dishonesty; principal; COSTS

摘要

Public choice theory (PCT) has had a powerful influence on political science and, to a lesser extent, public administration. Based on the premise that public officials are rational maximizers of their own utility, PCT has a quite successful record of correctly predicting governmental decisions and policies. This success is puzzling in light of behavioral findings showing that officials do not necessarily seek to maximize their own utility. Drawing on recent advances in behavioral ethics, this article offers a new behavioral foundation for PCT's predictions by delineating the psychological processes that lead well-intentioned people to violate moral and social norms. It reviews the relevant findings of behavioral ethics, analyzes their theoretical and policy implications for officials' decision making, and sets an agenda for future research. Evidence for Practice Ethical behavior is driven both by self-interest and by norms. Thus, officeholders tend to breach norms only to the extent that they can maintain their self-image as honest people. Public officeholders may act in self-interested ways because of automatic and unconscious motivations rather than deliberate and conscious calculations. The clearer it is to an officeholder that his or her interests diverge from those of the public at large, the less likely he or she is to give precedence to the former. Officeholders can recollect decisions they took that clearly promoted the public interest more easily than their self-interested decisions.