J Patrick Dobel
Biographic Data
| ID | 988919 |
|---|---|
| NAME | J Patrick Dobel |
| GIVEN NAMES | J Patrick |
| FAMILY NAME | Dobel |
| SIGNATURE | DOBEL J P |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Washington |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 59 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1976 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Leading During Fraught Transitions: Protect the Core
Transforming Corrupt Systems: What Have We Learned
The past two decades have witnessed a growing consensus among policy analysts, political elites, and advocates that corruption is a moral evil with significant deleterious consequences for national economies, social development, and human rights; that leaders across all sectors have a responsibility to fight it; and that a set of anticorruption reforms exists that, if implemented with sufficient “political will,” stand a fighting chance of transf…
The Strategic Advantage of Conflict of Interest Laws
The ongoing arguments and confusion about conflict of interest laws in Washington, DC, offer a good opportunity to remember that conflict of interest laws are not just a nuisance and an afterthough
The Fragility of Public Service: A Study ofRichard IIandMeasure for Measure
Shakespeare dramatizes in Richard II and Measure for Measure his belief that public service is not merely a description of the purposes of public administration, but is also an aspirational ideal that implies commitment to professional standards and qualities of character. This ideal, however, is fragile because of weaknesses in human nature that interfere with development of ideal character, especially power and ambition. These are made worse by…
What Athletic Achievement Can Teach About Ethics
Athletic achievement exemplifies the nature of classical ethical virtue. Aristotelian virtue grows from self-mastery combined with intentionally learned skills of practice and striving with others to achieve a common purpose. Virtue expresses itself through judgment and action that flow from the integration of cognitive, emotional, perceptual, physical, and relational attributes into pattern recognition and coordinated activity to achieve a purpo…
Prudence and Presidential Ethics: The Decisions on Iraq of the Two Presidents Bush
A very exacting type of prudence is demanded of ethical and effective political leaders. It requires critical self-awareness, diligence in obtaining information and modifying one's conduct in light of it, and attentiveness to the fit and proportionality of means and ends. Although there are counterparts in personal life to these attributes, the prudence of political leaders has a further dimension because of their responsibility for the welfare o…
The Rhetorical Possibilities of “Home” in Homeland Security
The creation of the Department of Homeland Security introduced “homeland” as a new concept into American political rhetoric. Using common language, literature, and philological analysis, this article uncovers the wide array of meanings that the metaphor home generates. These meanings can expand and constrain the policy focus of an institution dedicated to “home”-land security. They define home as: a place of refuge and peace; a place of intimacy …
Mission Integrity in Disaster Management
Mortal Leadership in Homer's Odyssey
Troy has fallen and the Greeks are victorious. Odysseus can now return home to his family and kingdom, but he will not get there for ten years. His "odyssey" portrays the qualities of mortal leadership—leadership that must be ethical even though exercised in an imperfect world where decisions may literally mean life and death. The struggles of Odysseus' wife, Penelope, display leadership tested by ordeal. The struggles of Odysseus and Penelope il…
The Odyssey of Senior Public Service: What Memoirs Can Teach Us
This article examines the political, psychological, and moral challenges of senior public service in the executive office. The study uses memoirs published by members of the Clinton administration. The memoirs discuss the consistent background conditions of senior public service as the personality of the chief executive, the vagaries of election cycles, the tension between staff and agency executives, and the role of the media. Senior executives …
Paradigms, Traditions, and Keeping the Faith
Can Public Leaders Have Friends
Friendship is one of the most important aspects of private life. It provides the social and relational support for integrity, growth, and intimacy. At the same time friendship can be vital to the life of a public leader. Friends anchor integrity and offer trust, honesty, and loyalty based on past experience. Using the classical ideal of friendship developed by Aristotle and Cicero, this article argues that friendship consists of a mutual and excl…
The ethics of resigning
Resigning from office is a critical ethical decision for individuals. Resignation also remains one of the basic moral resources for individuals of integrity. The option to resign reinforces integrity, buttresses responsibility, supports accountability, and can provide leverage and boundary drawing. I argue that the moral reasons to resign flow from three related moral dimensions of integrity. Individuals in office promise to live up to the obliga…
Judging the Private Lives of Public Officials
This article discusses the moral importance of privacy and its place in the lives of public officials. It examines the tension between the legitimate claims of citizens and overseers to scrutinize the private lives of public figures and the rights of officials to privacy. It argues that these legitimate reasons break down in practice almost all barriers to scrutiny due to the weaknesses of the limits and the incentives of American politics and th…
Political Prudence and the Ethics of Leadership
A vital policy initiative fails due to skilled opposition. A fine program disintegrates under pressure of an unanticipated backlash. A powerful and strong institution collapses when its long-time leader departs. A new leader full of good intentions soon flees office overcome by frustration and ineffectiveness. These all-too-familiar examples highlight haunting reality that good intentions, moral conviction, and even technical competence do not gu…
Managerial Leadership in Divided Times: William Ruckelshaus and the Paradoxes of Independence
This article discusses the special constraints imposed on public managers by divided governments that make it very difficult to pursue the normal strategies of effective public management. It examines the two terms of William D. Ruckelshaus as head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to illustrate the strategy of personal and institutional independence, which Rucketshaus developed to address these constraints. In particular he focused hi…
Impossible Jobs in Public Management
The Moral Realities of Public Life: Some Insights of Fiction
Accountability and Responsibility: Two Views
Journal Article Accountability and Responsibility: Two Views Get access Harold F. Gortner. Ethics for Public Managers. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1991. pp. xv, 186, $15.95. Lana Stein. Holding Bureaucrats Accountable: Politicians and Professionals in St. Louis. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, Institute for Social Research Monograph Series, 1991. pp. iv, 149, $19.95 paper. J Patrick Dobel J Patrick Dobel University of Washington Search…
Meeting in the Middle
Book reviewed in this article: Splitting the Difference. By Martin Benjamin. Compromise and Political Action. By J. Patrick Dobel
Celebrating Liberal Democracy
Compromise and Political Action
Journal Article Book Reviews Get access Compromise and Political Action. By J. PATRICK DOBEL. (Savage, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1990. Pp. 224. Price S34.50.) Bill E. Lawson Bill E. Lawson University of Delaware Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 41, Issue 164, July 1991, Pages 369–370, https://doi.org/10.2307/2220047 Published: 01 July 1991
Integrity in the Public Service
This article argues that public officials need a complex array of moral resources to exercise discretion in office. Three different realms of life are vital to the morally defensive exercise of discretion in office. These are personal responsibility and values, commitment to regime values and political prudence. No one realm provides all the moral resources to judge well in public service and each alone has severe limitations. This article uses t…
The Ethics of Public Service: Resolving Moral Dilemmas in Public Organizations. Kathryn G. Denhardt
The Honorable Spymaster: John Le Carré and the Character of Espionage
This article uses the George Smiley novels of John Le Carré to explore the moral attribution that occurs when individuals are asked to live lives of moral contradiction in the public service. The novels exemplify the moral, psychological, and institutional tensions upon individuals whose lives require them to act in contradiction to the professed norms of liberal democracy. The paper focuses upon the three types of character that inhabit this wor…
The Corruption of a State
This article presents a theory of corruption which unifies the moral, political, economic and social causes and patterns of corruption in one theoretical framework. The theory is constructed from the scattered insights about the "corruption of the body politic," building in particular upon the work of five theorists-Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli and Rousseau. Corruption is defined as the moral incapacity of citizens to make reasonably…
Transforming Corrupt Systems: What Have We Learned
The past two decades have witnessed a growing consensus among policy analysts, political elites, and advocates that corruption is a moral evil with significant deleterious consequences for national economies, social development, and human rights; that leaders across all sectors have a responsibility to fight it; and that a set of anticorruption reforms exists that, if implemented with sufficient “political will,” stand a fighting chance of transf…
The Moral Realities of Public Life: Some Insights of Fiction
Mortal Leadership in Homer's Odyssey
Troy has fallen and the Greeks are victorious. Odysseus can now return home to his family and kingdom, but he will not get there for ten years. His "odyssey" portrays the qualities of mortal leadership—leadership that must be ethical even though exercised in an imperfect world where decisions may literally mean life and death. The struggles of Odysseus' wife, Penelope, display leadership tested by ordeal. The struggles of Odysseus and Penelope il…
Judging the Private Lives of Public Officials
This article discusses the moral importance of privacy and its place in the lives of public officials. It examines the tension between the legitimate claims of citizens and overseers to scrutinize the private lives of public figures and the rights of officials to privacy. It argues that these legitimate reasons break down in practice almost all barriers to scrutiny due to the weaknesses of the limits and the incentives of American politics and th…
Managerial Leadership in Divided Times: William Ruckelshaus and the Paradoxes of Independence
This article discusses the special constraints imposed on public managers by divided governments that make it very difficult to pursue the normal strategies of effective public management. It examines the two terms of William D. Ruckelshaus as head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to illustrate the strategy of personal and institutional independence, which Rucketshaus developed to address these constraints. In particular he focused hi…
Impossible Jobs in Public Management
Accountability and Responsibility: Two Views
Journal Article Accountability and Responsibility: Two Views Get access Harold F. Gortner. Ethics for Public Managers. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1991. pp. xv, 186, $15.95. Lana Stein. Holding Bureaucrats Accountable: Politicians and Professionals in St. Louis. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, Institute for Social Research Monograph Series, 1991. pp. iv, 149, $19.95 paper. J Patrick Dobel J Patrick Dobel University of Washington Search…
The Honorable Spymaster: John Le Carré and the Character of Espionage
This article uses the George Smiley novels of John Le Carré to explore the moral attribution that occurs when individuals are asked to live lives of moral contradiction in the public service. The novels exemplify the moral, psychological, and institutional tensions upon individuals whose lives require them to act in contradiction to the professed norms of liberal democracy. The paper focuses upon the three types of character that inhabit this wor…
Leading During Fraught Transitions: Protect the Core
The Strategic Advantage of Conflict of Interest Laws
The ongoing arguments and confusion about conflict of interest laws in Washington, DC, offer a good opportunity to remember that conflict of interest laws are not just a nuisance and an afterthough
What Athletic Achievement Can Teach About Ethics
Athletic achievement exemplifies the nature of classical ethical virtue. Aristotelian virtue grows from self-mastery combined with intentionally learned skills of practice and striving with others to achieve a common purpose. Virtue expresses itself through judgment and action that flow from the integration of cognitive, emotional, perceptual, physical, and relational attributes into pattern recognition and coordinated activity to achieve a purpo…
The Rhetorical Possibilities of “Home” in Homeland Security
The creation of the Department of Homeland Security introduced “homeland” as a new concept into American political rhetoric. Using common language, literature, and philological analysis, this article uncovers the wide array of meanings that the metaphor home generates. These meanings can expand and constrain the policy focus of an institution dedicated to “home”-land security. They define home as: a place of refuge and peace; a place of intimacy …
Can Public Leaders Have Friends
Friendship is one of the most important aspects of private life. It provides the social and relational support for integrity, growth, and intimacy. At the same time friendship can be vital to the life of a public leader. Friends anchor integrity and offer trust, honesty, and loyalty based on past experience. Using the classical ideal of friendship developed by Aristotle and Cicero, this article argues that friendship consists of a mutual and excl…
The Role of Language in Rousseau's Political Thought
Professor Dobel argues here that Rousseau's careful and very considerable concern with language in all his political writing suggests that establishing a community of shared meanings and discourse is central to his project of making freedom, virtue and authority compatible. In this project, Rousseau also emphasizes the role of symbol, sound, sight, ritual and non-verbal communication in political life
Jean Jacques Rousseau: Volume I, The Quest
The Corruption of a State
This article presents a theory of corruption which unifies the moral, political, economic and social causes and patterns of corruption in one theoretical framework. The theory is constructed from the scattered insights about the "corruption of the body politic," building in particular upon the work of five theorists-Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli and Rousseau. Corruption is defined as the moral incapacity of citizens to make reasonably…
Rousseau and Representation: A Study of the Development of His Concept of Political Institutions. Richard Fralin
The Adviser. Herbert Goldhamer
Mail-Order Ethics: Reflections on Irresponsible Political Contributions and the Politics They Finance
Research Article| October 01 1982 Mail-Order Ethics: Reflections on Irresponsible Political Contributions and the Politics They Finance J. Patrick Dobel J. Patrick Dobel Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google South Atlantic Quarterly (1982) 81 (4): 376–386. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-81-4-376 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation J. Patrick Dobel; Mail-Order Eth…
The Primacy of the National Community
Research Article| April 01 1985 The Primacy of the National Community J. Patrick Dobel J. Patrick Dobel Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google South Atlantic Quarterly (1985) 84 (2): 161–174. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-84-2-161 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation J. Patrick Dobel; The Primacy of the National Community. South Atlantic Quarterly 1 April 1985; 84…
The Role of Language in Rousseau's Political Thought
Professor Dobel argues here that Rousseau's careful and very considerable concern with language in all his political writing suggests that establishing a community of shared meanings and discourse is central to his project of making freedom, virtue and authority compatible. In this project, Rousseau also emphasizes the role of symbol, sound, sight, ritual and non-verbal communication in political life
The Honorable Spymaster: John Le Carré and the Character of Espionage
This article uses the George Smiley novels of John Le Carré to explore the moral attribution that occurs when individuals are asked to live lives of moral contradiction in the public service. The novels exemplify the moral, psychological, and institutional tensions upon individuals whose lives require them to act in contradiction to the professed norms of liberal democracy. The paper focuses upon the three types of character that inhabit this wor…
The Ethics of Public Service: Resolving Moral Dilemmas in Public Organizations. Kathryn G. Denhardt
Integrity in the Public Service
This article argues that public officials need a complex array of moral resources to exercise discretion in office. Three different realms of life are vital to the morally defensive exercise of discretion in office. These are personal responsibility and values, commitment to regime values and political prudence. No one realm provides all the moral resources to judge well in public service and each alone has severe limitations. This article uses t…
Meeting in the Middle
Book reviewed in this article: Splitting the Difference. By Martin Benjamin. Compromise and Political Action. By J. Patrick Dobel
Celebrating Liberal Democracy
Compromise and Political Action
Journal Article Book Reviews Get access Compromise and Political Action. By J. PATRICK DOBEL. (Savage, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1990. Pp. 224. Price S34.50.) Bill E. Lawson Bill E. Lawson University of Delaware Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 41, Issue 164, July 1991, Pages 369–370, https://doi.org/10.2307/2220047 Published: 01 July 1991
Impossible Jobs in Public Management
The Moral Realities of Public Life: Some Insights of Fiction
Accountability and Responsibility: Two Views
Journal Article Accountability and Responsibility: Two Views Get access Harold F. Gortner. Ethics for Public Managers. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1991. pp. xv, 186, $15.95. Lana Stein. Holding Bureaucrats Accountable: Politicians and Professionals in St. Louis. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, Institute for Social Research Monograph Series, 1991. pp. iv, 149, $19.95 paper. J Patrick Dobel J Patrick Dobel University of Washington Search…
Managerial Leadership in Divided Times: William Ruckelshaus and the Paradoxes of Independence
This article discusses the special constraints imposed on public managers by divided governments that make it very difficult to pursue the normal strategies of effective public management. It examines the two terms of William D. Ruckelshaus as head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to illustrate the strategy of personal and institutional independence, which Rucketshaus developed to address these constraints. In particular he focused hi…
Judging the Private Lives of Public Officials
This article discusses the moral importance of privacy and its place in the lives of public officials. It examines the tension between the legitimate claims of citizens and overseers to scrutinize the private lives of public figures and the rights of officials to privacy. It argues that these legitimate reasons break down in practice almost all barriers to scrutiny due to the weaknesses of the limits and the incentives of American politics and th…
Political Prudence and the Ethics of Leadership
A vital policy initiative fails due to skilled opposition. A fine program disintegrates under pressure of an unanticipated backlash. A powerful and strong institution collapses when its long-time leader departs. A new leader full of good intentions soon flees office overcome by frustration and ineffectiveness. These all-too-familiar examples highlight haunting reality that good intentions, moral conviction, and even technical competence do not gu…
The ethics of resigning
Resigning from office is a critical ethical decision for individuals. Resignation also remains one of the basic moral resources for individuals of integrity. The option to resign reinforces integrity, buttresses responsibility, supports accountability, and can provide leverage and boundary drawing. I argue that the moral reasons to resign flow from three related moral dimensions of integrity. Individuals in office promise to live up to the obliga…
Paradigms, Traditions, and Keeping the Faith
Can Public Leaders Have Friends
Friendship is one of the most important aspects of private life. It provides the social and relational support for integrity, growth, and intimacy. At the same time friendship can be vital to the life of a public leader. Friends anchor integrity and offer trust, honesty, and loyalty based on past experience. Using the classical ideal of friendship developed by Aristotle and Cicero, this article argues that friendship consists of a mutual and excl…
The Odyssey of Senior Public Service: What Memoirs Can Teach Us
This article examines the political, psychological, and moral challenges of senior public service in the executive office. The study uses memoirs published by members of the Clinton administration. The memoirs discuss the consistent background conditions of senior public service as the personality of the chief executive, the vagaries of election cycles, the tension between staff and agency executives, and the role of the media. Senior executives …
Mortal Leadership in Homer's Odyssey
Troy has fallen and the Greeks are victorious. Odysseus can now return home to his family and kingdom, but he will not get there for ten years. His "odyssey" portrays the qualities of mortal leadership—leadership that must be ethical even though exercised in an imperfect world where decisions may literally mean life and death. The struggles of Odysseus' wife, Penelope, display leadership tested by ordeal. The struggles of Odysseus and Penelope il…
Prudence and Presidential Ethics: The Decisions on Iraq of the Two Presidents Bush
A very exacting type of prudence is demanded of ethical and effective political leaders. It requires critical self-awareness, diligence in obtaining information and modifying one's conduct in light of it, and attentiveness to the fit and proportionality of means and ends. Although there are counterparts in personal life to these attributes, the prudence of political leaders has a further dimension because of their responsibility for the welfare o…
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