Political Ethics

Abstract

Political ethics is the practice of making moral judgments about political action, and the study of that practice. It is divided into two branches: the ethics of process, which focuses on public officials, the methods they use, and the institutions in which they act; and the ethics of policy, which concentrates on judgments about the policies and laws governments make. The central question in the ethics of process is the extent to which the ethical principles that govern political office differ from those that govern moral life, and typically involves conflicts between means and ends. The problems in policy ethics implicate conflicts between the values of the ends themselves. The key question is not what policies would be morally justifiable in general but what would be justified as coercively enforced law when citizens reasonably disagree about the values at stake, or when they belong to different communities and nations.