Person:

Thompson, Dennis

Pursuing the common good in a pluralist democracy is not possible without making compromises. Yet the spirit of compromise is in short supply in contemporary American politics. The permanent campaign has made compromise more difficult to achieve, as the uncompromising mindset suitable for campaigning has come to dominate the task of governing. To begin to make compromise more feasible and the common good more attainable, we need to appreciate the distinctive value of compromise and recognize the misconceptions that stand in its way. A common mistake is to assume that compromise requires finding the common ground on which all can agree. That undermines more realistic efforts to seek classic compromises, in which each party gains by sacrificing something valuable to the other, and together they serve the common good by improving upon the status quo. Institutional reforms are desirable, but they, too, cannot get off the ground without the support of leaders and citizens who learn how and when to adopt a compromising mindset.

Dennis F. Thompson analyzes the capacity of presidential primaries to provide a test of the constitutional character of candidates. He argues that the primary process should be judged to be more or less democratic on the basis of the effective opportunities it gives voters to assess the democratic commitments of the candidates.

Political compromise is difficult in American democracy even though no one doubts it is necessary. It is difficult for many reasons, including the recent increase in political polarization that has been widely criticized. We argue that the resistance to compromise cannot be fully appreciated without understanding its source in the democratic process itself, especially as conducted in the U.S. The incursion of campaigning into governing in American democracy — the so called “permanent campaign”— encourages political attitudes and arguments that make compromise more difficult. These constitute what we call the uncompromising mindset, characterized by politicians’ standing on principle and mistrusting opponents. This mindset is conducive to campaigning, but not to governing, because it stands in the way of necessary change and thereby biases the democratic process in favor of the status quo. The uncompromising mindset can be kept in check by an opposite cluster of attitudes and arguments — the compromising mindset — that inclines politicians to adapt their principles and respect their opponents. This mindset is more appropriate for governing, because it enables politicians more readily to recognize and act on opportunities for desirable compromise. We explore the dynamics of these mindsets by examining the processes that led to the compromises on tax reform in 1986 and health care reform in 2010.

The problem of many hands—the difficulty of assigning responsibility in organizations in which many different individuals contribute to decisions and policies—stands in the way of investigating and correcting the failures of government. The problem can be mitigated by giving greater attention to the design of processes of organizational responsibility. An independent investigation can identify both the individual actions and the structural defects that contributed to an organizational failure. Then, specific individuals can be designated as overseers, who are held responsible for monitoring the structure and making changes as necessary. Three cases—the official responses to terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, and the financial crisis that began in 2007—illustrate how this prospective approach of designing responsibility could work in practice.

The expanding relationships between industry and medicine have produced great benefits. Industry support for medical research has led to important therapeutic breakthroughs. Such support has helped medical education at all levels. Academic research, in turn, has provided industry with many basic ideas that lead to the development of new drugs and medical devices. However, as these relationships have grown, the conflict between the financial goals of industry and the professional goals of medicine is creating significant risks for not only the profession but also the public. What should be the primary goals of medicine—high quality research, responsible patient care and excellent medical education—may be compromised by the undue pursuit of financial gain. That tension is what policies for regulating conflicts of interests should be designed to control.

Obama's "ethics agenda" is the most ambitious ever set out by a new administration. It promises a tougher approach not only to the usual problems such as conflict of interest and the revolving door, but also to broader challenges such as political influence on career officials and lack of transparency in government. The goals of the agenda are a step forward insofar as they focus more on improving the democratic process than disciplining political miscreants. But the means relied on to carry out the goals are less impressive. They perpetuate a major deficiency of the current ethics regime—its disjointedness, which undermines the transparency and accountability necessary for a robust democracy. What is needed is a coordinated approach, led from the White House itself, that takes a more comprehensive view of ethics regulation throughout the government.

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.

Normative theorists of corruption have developed an institutional conception that is distinct from both the individualist approaches focused on quid pro quo exchanges and other institutional approaches found in the literature on developing societies. These theorists emphasize the close connection between patterns of corruption and the legitimate functions of institutions. The corruption benefits the institution while undermining it. Reforms therefore should be directed toward finding alternatives for the functions the corruption serves. Also, institutional corruption does not require that its perpetrators have corrupt motives, and it is not limited to political institutions. This review examines four leading theories and discusses criticisms of their approach. A tripartite framework for analyzing the elements of institutional corruption is proposed. Although the theories are useful for distinguishing institutional corruption from the more familiar forms of individual corruption, they could be enriched by giving greater attention to the work on individual corruption in its structural forms in developing societies.

Election law should focus less on deliberation in elections and more on deliberation about elections. Promoting deliberative elections is problematic because it runs against the competitive nature of campaigns, frustrates the goal of giving voters a clear choice, and discredits deliberation by realizing only a pale version of deliberative ideals. Promoting deliberation about elections is more promising because it aims at a shared goal, and better promotes deliberative ideals (such as the requirements that participants be willing to change their minds in response to reasons, and that they represent a wide range of perspectives). This approach would permit greater regulation of campaigns but with the aim of removing distortions rather than realizing deliberation. It would encourage more reliance on institutions, such as the citizens' assembly, for bringing about electoral reform, and more attention to the challenges these institutions pose.