Restoring Responsibility

Dennis F. Thompson is Alfred North Whitehead Professor of Political Philosophy and Professor of Government in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Professor of Public Policy in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

• Introduction; Part I. Demands of Institutional Politics: 1. The moral responsibility of public officials: the problem of many hands; 2. Ascribing responsibility to advisers in government; 3. Bureaucracy and democracy; 4. Judicial responsibility: the problem of many minds; 5. Representatives in the welfare state; Part II. Varieties of Institutional Failure: 6. Democratic secrecy: the dilemma of accountability; 7. Mediated corruption: the case of the Keating Five; 8. Election time: normative implications of temporal properties of the electoral process in the US; 9. Hypocrisy and democracy; 10. Private life and public office; Part III. Extensions of Institutional Responsibility: 11. Restoring distrust: the ethics of oversight; 12. The institutional turn in professional ethics; 13. Hospital ethics; 14. Understanding financial conflicts of interest in medicine; 15. The privatization of business ethics; 16. Democratic theory and global society.

'This collection is much better than most … for two reasons. First of all, it is written by someone who actually knows both moral philosophy and organizational behavior. Second, it manages to view individuals as both moral agents and institutionally bound actors together - without merging individuals as moral agents with their institutional roles - by shifting our attention in ethics from a focus on individual vice to a focus on institutional vice. This latter move is very important.' Marion Smiley, Brandeis University