Symposium: Does a New Public Governance Demand New Public Ethics?

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12648
• Published date: 01 September 2016
• Date: 01 September 2016

Symposium: Does a New Public Governance Demand New Public Ethics? 833

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 76, Iss. 5, pp. 833. © 2016 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12648.

Call for Papers

Guest Editors

• Gjalt de Graaf , Department Political Science

and Public Administration, Vrije Universiteit

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

• Michael Macaulay , Institute for Governance and

Policy Studies, Victoria University of Wellington,

New Zealand

P ublic management is living in a new and still

relatively untested age. Traditional public

administration gave way to New Public

Management and continues to evolve into new

forms of public governance. This development has

gone hand in hand, of course, with other massive

social, political, economic, and technological

changes: individualization, globalization, information

technology, and many more. As a result, institutions

disaggregate and realign in increasingly complex

forms; hybridization and collaboration are becoming

increasingly the norm while more formal institutional

arrangements wither.

Remaining at the heart of each of these

manifestations, however, is the concept of public

ethics. As new forms of governance have emerged

we have witnessed a parallel rise in the ways we try

to understand integrity and ethics. Integrity systems,

for example, have been developed at all levels:

organizational, local, national, and international.

New policy initiatives such as the Open Government

Partnership have brought values such as transparency

and integrity to the fore on the global stage and have

led to cross-cultural conversations. Yet despite these

trends, or perhaps because of them, scientific evidence

about the nature, legitimacy, and ethics of new

governance paradigms remains relatively scarce. The

normative dimensions of new governance dimensions

are not well understood.

This call for papers on the ethics of new public

governance is intended to remedy limitations in

current scientific and normative knowledge. We

welcome empirical and theoretical papers in the

following areas:

• What new institutional forms have arisen for

dealing with ethical conduct, anti-corruption

activity, and standards of behavior, and what has

their impact been?

• Are there new connections between public

values (integrity, democracy, accountability,

transparency) in new governance contexts, or

have there been any new clashes?

• What has been the impact of the continuing

reconceptualization of the citizen (as client,

consumer, co-producer, collaborator, etc.) on the

ethical lenses in which we frame relationships

with the state?

• To what extent have increasingly diverse forms

of public participation had an influence on new

forms of legitimacy in public governance?

• How do we learn about integrity and ethics?

Can we meaningfully measure and evaluate

integrity in the ever changing sociopolitical

landscape?

• What is the role of organizational learning for

ethical culture, climate, and behavior? Has it

yielded genuine results or simply been used as

window dressing?

• In what ways, if any, have collaboration, cross-

agency working, and policy transfer helped to

develop robust and resilient ethical practice?

We hope to provide a forum for papers that addresses

both what we know about the changing landscape

and how we know it. In so doing we hope to bring

forth lessons that will be of practical benefit to policy

makers and public servants, as well as promote

academic rigor in this exciting arena.

Manuscripts are due no later than November 30,

2016, to the coordinating guest editors, g.de.graaf@

vu.nl and michael.macaulay@vuw.ac.nz . After initial

screening, authors of selected manuscripts will be

invited to submit directly to Public Administration

Review ( PAR )’s Editorial Manager for double-blind

review, with final decisions regarding publication

being made by PAR ’s editors. All authors should

comply with PAR ’s style guidelines.

Symposium: Does a New Public Governance

Demand New Public Ethics?