REMARKS ON THE ETHICAL FOUNDATIONS OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

The main point of this paper is that public administration has a substantial ethical foundation due to more reasons. At first, public servants are not to be equated with business employees, since the goal of the state is not profit, but the enforcement of law and order to ensure proper social conditions for citizens and companies. Secondly, public servants’ correct behavior should not be financially rewarded – since money cannot buy morality – but, at the same time, public clerks are not to be taken advantage of. Thirdly, it is not economic welfare, but moral commitment that makes a good public servant. In order to have committed and integer public servant, the state should use ethical testing and continuous ethical training of its clerks, mostly because these are the proper ways to avoid or at least lower corruption. All these arguments are in favor of the idea that ethics is not a burden that hinders social development, but a tool to create a moral profile of the public servant and to ensure and support social evolution.