Developed by D. Don Welch during his 28 years of teaching ethics and public policy, the rationale behind A Guide to Ethics and Public Policy is to present a comprehensive guide for making policy judgments. Rather than present specific cases that raise moral issues or discuss the role a few concepts play in the moral analysis of policy, this book instead provides a broad framework for the moral evaluation of public policies and policy proposals. This framework is organized around guiding five principles: benefit, effectiveness, fairness, fidelity, and legitimacy. These principles identify the factors that should be taken into account and the issues that should be addressed as citizens address the question of what the United States government should be able to do. Organized by concept, with illustrations and examples frequently interspersed, the book covers both theory and specific issues. A Guide to Ethics and Public Policy outlines a comprehensive ethical framework, provides content to the meaning of the five principles that comprise that framework through the use of illustrations and examples, and offers guidance about how to navigate one’s way through the conflicts and dilemmas that inevitably result from a serious effort to analyze policies.

Exploring the ethical frameworks and principles upon which governments can and should base their policies, this study draws on papers from the 2009 Ethical Foundations of Public Policy conference held in Wellington, covering topics such as ethics in decision making and advice giving, sustainability, equality and justice, and measuring progress. The examination contends that interplay between ethical considerations and policy creation is often complex, controversial, and challenging but that the careful management of this interplay is vital to the effective functioning of liberal, democratic government. Demonstrating the inextricable link between ethics and public policy, this is essential reading for policymakers, students, and those interested in the policy process.

What does it mean to do public policy ethics today? How should philosophers engage with ethical issues in policy-making when policy decisions are circumscribed by political and pragmatic concerns? How do ethical issues in public policy differ between areas such as foreign policy, criminal justice, or environmental policy? The Routledge Handbook of Ethics and Public Policy addresses all these questions and more, and is the first handbook of its kind. It is comprised of 41 chapters written by leading international contributors, and is organised into four clear sections covering the following key topics: Methodology: philosophical approaches to public policy, ethical expertise, knowledge, and public policy Democracy and public policy: identity, integration and inclusion: voting, linguistic policy, discrimination, youth policy, religious toleration, and the family Public goods: defence and foreign policy, development and climate change, surveillance and internal security, ethics of welfare, healthcare and fair trade, sovereignty and territorial boundaries, and the ethics of nudging Public policy challenges: criminal justice, policing, taxation, poverty, disability, reparation, and ethics of death policies. The Routledge Handbook of Ethics and Public Policy is essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy, politics, and social policy. It will be equally useful to those in related disciplines, such as economics and law, or professional fields, such as business administration or policy-making in general.

What makes a policy work? What should policies attempt to do, and what ought they not do? These questions are at the heart of both policy-making and ethics. Philosophy, Ethics and Public Policy: An Introduction examines these questions and more. Andrew I. Cohen uses contemporary examples and controversies, mainly drawn from policy in a North American context, to illustrate important flashpoints in ethics and public policy, such as: public policy and globalization: sweatshops; medicine and the developing world; immigration marriage, family and education: same-sex marriage; women and the family; education and Intelligent Design justifying and responding to state coercion: torture; reparations and restorative justice the ethics of the body and commodification: the human organ trade, and factory farming of animals. Each chapter illustrates how ethics offers ways of prioritizing some policy alternatives and imagining new ones. Reflecting on various themes in globalization, markets, and privacy, the chapters are windows to enduring significant debates about what states may do to shape our behavior. Overall, the book will help readers understand how ethics can frame policymaking, while also suggesting that sometimes the best policy is no policy. Including annotated further reading, this is an excellent introduction to a fast-growing subject for students in Philosophy, Public Policy, and related disciplines.

Of all the books written about the problems of sustainable development and environmental protection, Sustainable Development: Science, Ethics, and Public Policy is one of the first to examine the role of science, economics and law, and ethics as generally applied to decision making on sustainable development, particularly in respect to the recommendations contained in Agenda 21. Specifically, the book examines the role, capabilities, and certain strengths and weaknesses of these disciplines and their ethical implications in the context of sustainable development problems. Such an analysis is necessary to determine whether sustainable development problems create important new challenges and problems for government so that, where appropriate, new tools or approaches may be designed to overcome limitations or take advantage of the strengths of current scientific, economic and legal capabilities. Audience: Environmental professionals, whether academic, governmental or industrial, or in the private consultancy sector. Also suitable as an upper level text or reference.

From the Nuremberg trials to the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 to recent budget reconciliation bills, the Encyclopedia of Public Administration and Public Policy provides detailed coverage of watershed policies and decisions from such fields as privatization, biomedical ethics, education, and diversity. This second edition features a wide range of new topics, including military administration, government procurement, social theory, and justice administration in developed democracies. It also addresses current issues such as the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and covers public administration in the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia, the Pacific, and Latin America.

This volume explores the professional ethics of addresses the varied ethical needs of the professional economists and public policy professionals. Using terms and methods familiar to the reader, the book goes beyond the typical narrative of economics and morality to walk the professional through the process of ethical decision-making. Designed to be easy to navigate and applicable to everyday practice, this book includes a step-by-step illustrated guide through an ethical decision-making process using a methodology specifically tailored to economists and policy professionals. It describes numerous unique ethical tests and resolution methods which are utilized in a portfolio structure. The book also includes a brief and convenient catalogue of important figures in philosophy and ethics, translated into their policy applications; it concludes with candid advice from experts in different subfields on how ethics impacts their professional lives. This volume provides a foundation and framework for those in economics and public policy to implement a relevant practice of professional ethics both at and in their work.

Each year, roughly a million new cases of cancer appear in the US, and more than 500,000 Americans die annually of premature death. Although medical progress has slowed cancer mortality, its incidence is increasing roughly six times faster than cancer mortality is decreasing. Breast cancer, in particular, has been increasing about one percent each year since 1973. At least two of the factors responsible for this surge in breast cancer are women's use of medically-prescribed synthetic hormones and the exposure of the entire population to chemicals such as dioxin. Both exposures increase the likelihood of breast cancer. Although many ethicists worry about involuntary societal imposition of chemicals such as dioxin, through industrial and agricultural processes, allegedly voluntary exposures also constitute both, a public-health problem and a biomedical-ethics difficulty. Physicians recommend synthetic hormones, for example, to women who apparently take them voluntarily. In the case of in vitro fertilization, doctors prescribe hormones to induce egg production and to increase the chances of reproduction for couples who are unable to have children. Despite the benefits of medical technologies such as hormone stimulation and in vitro fertilization, they also carry great risks. The price that childless women pay, for their opportunity to have children through in vitro fertilization, may be their own increased risk of diseases - such as breast cancer - that are hormone dependent.

Delineating implications for administrative ethics from other fields such as sociology, psychology, and philosophy, this reference provides a comprehensive review of administrative ethics in the public sector. Detailing the context within which contemporary ethics training has developed, the book examines the effectiveness of ethics training, legal and organizational devices for encouraging desired conduct, and other topics of particular relevance to the political and social contexts of public administration. Written by over 25 leading scholars in public administration ethics, the book creates a taxonomy for administrative ethics using the categories of modern philosophy.