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Ethics in Leadership Assignment #2
Article #2 – Leadership Principles Assignment
First – Select or expand your topic area (transgender ban) and select the same of different issue;
Second – Make sure that you are working on either an expansion of your first issue (there is more information to explore, or there is a different aspect of the issue that is focused on leadership) or select another discrete issue in your topic area.
Assignment Due: Sunday, March 7, 2019 at 11:59 pm
Parameters of the Article – The article must be at least 4 pages but no more than 6 pages, not counting the title page and references. There are 8 questions in this assignment. Use your page allocations wisely so that every question gets an adequate amount of space in your discussion. Make sure to continue to use the definitions on ethics that we have used in this class and any additional class handouts for the maximum points.
Questions to answer in the article – Looking at the actions of President Trump and the White House with respect to his discourse, policies and actions in your issue area:
1. Is there evidence based on Price’s (2008) assumptions about Trump’s actions or discourse that he believes that he deserves a “moral exception” for his rule-breaking or promise-breaking actions as it relates to the issue you identified? When answering this overall question:
a. Analyze each assumption (included in the summary below, page 3) and comment on whether the assumption is reflected in Trumps dialogue or actions?
b. Do Trump’s followers agree with granting Trump a moral exception for the decisions he has made regarding your issue? Make sure to discuss follower’s opinions. If there are not some specific discussions from followers on this topic, what have non-supporters said about Trumps actions?
2. Based on the actions that Trump has taken regarding your topic and specific issue, answer the following questions:
a. Analyze Trump’s actions on your topic based on the difference between Price’s (2008) discussion of psychological and ethical egoism (pages 80-87) [This information in included in the summary, but you should read it for yourselves in the book]. Since psychological egoism includes selfish desires and ethical egoism does not, how do followers justify Trump’s inclusion of his selfish desires in his self-interests?
b. After reading the attached article on Narcissism and Unethical Leadership, analyze whether, with respect to your issue, Trump has either demonstrated or not demonstrated one of the unethical behaviors 1) one-way communications, 2) one-way control of power, 3) insensitivity to others 4) unrealistic assessment of the environment, 5) manipulation, and 6) pseudo-transformational behaviors. When looking at the behavior you selected, make sure to include instances where Trump has acted ethically (if appropriate).
c. Price (2008) suggests that traits and virtues are only descriptive, and therefore do not predict leader behavior. Explain the any traits or virtues that President Trump possesses and that followers support that result in him following ethical norms related to your topic issue? If you agree with Price that traits and virtues do not predict behavior, which of Trump’s traits or virtues that are touted by his followers, and which should predict his ethical behavior, do not result in his following ethical norms? [Again, look at the summary, but make sure to read Price, pages 93-116]
3. Compare Trump’s actions regarding your issue to Kleptocratic regimes with similar issues by answering the following questions. [Make sure to read the three articles on Kleptopcracy, 2 included in this handout, and another attached].
a. Define Kleptopcracy and determine if there are changes that US seems to be making that are bringing the US close to resembling Kleptocratic policies, and if these changes violate standard US ethical norms.
b. With respect to your issue, review and analyze any evidence that there are Kleptocratic influences (nepotism, laundering, etc.) that may be influencing the ethics of your issue? If not, are there areas that a vulnerable to such influence? Use only one example for this question.
c. What actions, that are permissible under a Kleptocracy, are most problematic to democratic notion of ethical leadership as it relates to your issue? Use only one example for this question.
Readings:
1. Narcissism and Unethical Leadership Article (Included)
2. Leadership Ethics (Included)
3. Kleptopcracy (Attached)
Leadership Ethics Summary (Price, 2008, Part 1)
Price (2008) suggests that leaders may be perceived as “morally special” and are justified in doing what followers are not allowed to do. In the first half of the book, Price discussed how the distinctive features of leadership we have accepted as precursors to ethical behavior may justify leader rule and promise breaking behavior. [Price’s premise – Heroes can break rules, Villains cannot – leaders fall somewhere in the middle]
The following assumptions that outline the reasons why leaders are exceptional, (and therefore can decide when to engage in rule-breaking) suggests that leaders:
· Serve group ends
· Adhere to common leader norms (US definition)
· Know which groups ends are valuable (and focus on group are they serving)
· Know how to use power
· Possess certain leadership-related personality traits that support important behavior
· Have effectively used or overcome issues in their upbringing that resulted in their success or achievement
· Engages in actions that are justified by followers in that followers continue to support
· Are responsive to necessity and accurately assess necessity.
Price’s (2008) explains Immanuel Kant’s perspective related to leaders and asserts that though the foundation of deontological ethics binds leaders and followers alike, leaders will adhere to both Categorical Imperatives, first because of the superiority of “reason” and respect for leader and follower rational agency, and secondly, that morality will emerge because of an agent’s respect for the formal structure of reason itself – Kant’s deontological perspective is helpful in evaluating whether leader rule-breaking can be considered ethical
· First Categorical Imperative – one should not do anything that cannot become a universal law such that if others engaged in the same behavior it would help no one, especially the doer. (E.g. If everyone lied, then no one could be relied on)
· Second Categorical Imperative – one should act in such a way that one always treats humanity, whether in one’s own person or the person of another, never simply as a means, but only as an end. This requires followers to be rational agents and that actions they take on behalf of leaders are actions based on their own rational judgment and consent. Leaders must promote the autonomy of followers. Followers may have hard choices, but they are choices.
· Results of Categorical Imperative arguments for leaders
· Leaders who engage in immoral behavior are unreasonable if they violate the categorical imperative;
· Leaders recognize broad duties (deontological) exist and that these duties often go to followers (group members).
· Leader’s rule-breaking exceptions for themselves are on grounds that they believe that what they are doing is not immoral but that the exception is warranted based on the circumstances not moral grounds.
· If leaders can justify their behavior on circumstances by arguing that another similarly situated leader would make the same decision, then they can justify their decision as being more important than the moral rules. This is not necessarily a Kantian argument (consequences vs deontology).
· Leaders are constrained by follower’s consent. If leaders provide followers with a rich set of choices, followers will provide de jure (legal) legitimacy.
Psychological Egoism vs Ethical Egoism [Ethical Egoism is the theory (Price 2008 citing Rand, 1999) – Even though ethical egoism may be a better analysis for leaders attempting to justify their moral behavior on egoism, ethical egoism may not be sufficient to support ethical leadership.
· Psychological Egoism – Leaders are justified in acting in their own self-interest because people are selfish by nature (psychological and biological)
· People are not always motivated by their own objective self-interest, but people may be motivated by fairness, collective outcomes, shaped by their values and ideologies
· Leaders may believe that they can expand their self-interest to include their selfish desires because their power allows it, even if the selfish desires may be considered immoral.
· Ethical Egoism – Actions, even rule-breaking, are moral when it advances a person’s self-interest, not their selfish desires.
· Rule breaking behaviors that amount to fraud and breach of contract cannot be justified on the theory of ethical egoism because they represent illegal activity.
· There may be a business case for rule-breaking or not fulfilling promises because “everything is permitted in the market context.”
· Followers may select leaders who share their interests, such that if the leader advances their personal self-interests, it will still be in the interest of followers.
· Leaders must not devalue the ends of others, but respect the “social relationship” with followers.
Traits and Virtues – Both of these traditional leadership requirements seem to lack the predicative quality to determine justify rule-breaking as ethical leadership behavior
Traits – Leaders are exceptional, and therefore deserve an exception (they can break rules) because they possess these traits (Yukl, 2006). Those these traits are standard leadership traits, most are descriptive and do not necessarily result in ethical behavior
· Energy level and stress tolerance
· Self-confidence
· Strong Internal Locus of Control – they control the outcomes
· High Power motivation
· High Achievement Orientation
· Need for affiliation
· Emotional Stability and Maturity
· Personal Integrity (there may be justification based on personal integrity)
Virtues – Those that have certain “virtuous” habits of behavior can be allowed to engage in rule-breaking, but history says that we cannot rely on these virtues because virtues fail to predict behavior. Even when leaders possess virtuous character traits, they may
· Suffer from uniqueness bias – unrealistic belief that they can handle things better than others.
· Result to providing a justification based on the use of a “constructive social comparison” to manufacture a less fortunate other. (some leaders don’t believe they even need to do this)
· Suffer from cognitive dissonance theory which states that they may generate self-serving cognitions justify their feelings and behaviors
· Fail to use practical wisdom (analysis of prior situations which support virtuous prior decisions).
Kleptocratic Rule:
A Kleptocracy – (from Greek κλέπτης kléptēs, “thief”, κλέπτω kléptō, “I steal”, and -κρατία -kratía from κράτος krátos, “power, rule”) is a government with corrupt leaders (kleptocrats) that use their power to exploit the people and natural resources of their own territory in order to extend their personal wealth and political powers. Typically, this system involves embezzlement of funds at the expense of the wider population. [1][2]
Kleptopcracy is different from a plutocracy; A is a government ruled by corrupt politicians who use their political power to receive kickbacks, bribes, and special favors at the expense of the populace. Kleptocrats may use political leverage to pass laws that enrich them or their constituents and they usually circumvent the rule of law
The Trump Administration as a Kleptopcracy – Donald Trump’s fondness for nepotism echoes the actions of countless corrupt leaders across the world.
Gage Skidmore
If the past year has shown us anything, it’s that there’s been a blurring of the lines between the Trump Organization’s business interests, political decisions made by the administration and Congress, and how tax payer money is spent. That, and Trump continues to profit from his businesses, despite promises to divest. Trump’s fondness for nepotism echoes the actions of countless corrupt leaders across the world. In an attempt to remove any conflict of interest, Trump handed his businesses over to his children. This fails to address the conflict of interest problem and simply leaves us in the dark about his political motivation. Are decisions made in the interest of the American people, or to benefit himself and his family? From Angola to Equatorial Guinea and Cambodia, countries where Global Witness (a has exposed corruption, notoriously corrupt and kleptocratic leaders and their families have profited greatly at the expense of the public good. How were they able to do this? Through consolidating power by putting relatives in high-level positions, censoring and threatening the press, promoting secrecy, and blocking or opposing transparency laws. Sounds alarmingly like the US under Donald Trump…
1.) TRUMP IS USING HIS PRESIDENCY TO ENRICH HIMSELF
The Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. opened its doors shortly before the 2016 election, and is now a favorite go-to place of foreign governments and industry groups, like the American Petroleum Institute, looking to cozy up to Trump and his administration. From September 2016 through April 2017, Trump made $19.7 million from the hotel. Officials, diplomats and lobbyists linked to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait and Azerbaijan – all countries perceived to be highly corrupt according to Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index – have chosen to host lavish events at the hotel. Bahrain and Kuwait even shifted events previously booked at other venues to the hotel, according to TIME. Maryland, Washington D.C., and nearly 200 Democratic Congress members have sued Trump, alleging this violates the US constitution’s foreign emoluments clause, stating that a president may not accept gifts or benefits from foreign governments. Lawsuits from public interest groups have revealed that several US agencies – such as the National Security Council and Department of Homeland Security – have been spending taxpayer money putting up staff at Trump hotels and resorts since he took office. A recent investigation by Global Witness, Narco-a-Lago: Money Laundering at the Trump Ocean Club, Panama reveals that Donald Trump made millions from selling his name to a Panama development used to launder money from Latin American drug cartels. Trump’s Presidential disclosures show he was still making money from a management contract for the Trump Ocean Club when he took office in 2017.
2.) NEPOTISM (AKA – APPOINTING ONE’S OWN FAMILY TO POLITICAL POSITIONS)
Nepotism, or when someone uses their position of power to provide a job or favor to a family member or friend, is a tried and trusted method to hold onto and consolidate power, while also allowing family members to profit from public office. Trump’s appointing his son-in-law Jared Kusher as White House “senior adviser” and his daughter Ivanka Trump as “adviser” raises alarm bells as both are still closely connected to their families’ billion dollar businesses – and rife with potential conflicts of interest. The Kushner family even came under fire earlier this year in Beijing for appearing to lure $500,000 investments for one of their developments with the prospect of getting an investor visa to immigrate to the US. Kushner’s position at the White House was also referenced at the same event. Global Witness investigations have exposed similar behavior in countries such as Cambodia and Equatorial Guinea. In the latter, President Obiang uses the country’s oil wealth to enrich himself and his family. Our investigations have exposed how the President’s son and government minister, Teodorin Obiang, has spent millions of dollars sustaining a playboy lifestyle in Europe and the U.S. while earning a government salary of only a few thousand dollars a month.
3.) CENSORSHIP AND ATTACKS ON A FREE PRESS
Since Trump became president he’s tweeted about “Fake News” 155 times – that’s just about every other day. When faced with critical news, or news not to his liking, he labels it as “Fake News” and attacks outlets and networks like CNN, New York Times, and NBC – even going so far as to suggest NBC’s license should be revoked – in other words, that they should be shut down. One Sunday morning he tweeted a mocked-up video of him punching and wrestling a figure whose head had been replaced by the CNN logo. The end of the video proclaims that CNN is “FNN: Fraud News Network”. In a world where more and more journalists are jailed and murdered around the world each year – these threats are serious. This tactic to delegitimize and attack the press is a hallmark characteristic of authoritarian and kleptocratic regimes who want to control information flow and crack down on anything they believe could lead to dissent. In a crackdown on free speech this summer, Cambodia Prime Minister Hun Sen took 33 radio stations off air and the US-backed paper The Cambodia Daily was handed a US$ 6.3 million tax bill it says is politically motivated. In a regime spanning 30 years, Hun Sen has systematically enriched his family and allies, while quashing all political opposition.
4.) A GROWING CLAMP DOWN ON TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY
From Angola to Kazakhstan to the DRC, Global Witness’ investigations have shown how secrecy in the natural resource sector entrenches corruption and props up Kleptocratic regimes. Trump is now taking a similar approach by attacking a U.S. transparency law and initiatives that aim to help combat natural resource corruption in the US and globally. The first legislation introduced by House Republicans once Trump took office was an effort to derail Dodd-Frank Section 1504, a bi-partisan anti-corruption and transparency law that requires US listed oil, gas and mining companies to disclose the hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of payments they make to foreign governments. Ultimately Congress voted to overturn the rule to implement this transparency provision, in what can clearly be seen as a gift to big oil. While serving as head of Exxon, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson himself lobbied against this payment disclosure rule. Exxon is being investigated by Nigerian authorities for a deal potentially defrauding the Nigerian people of billions of dollars. Similarly the Trump administration and House Republicans have attacked the conflict minerals provision of Dodd-Frank, Section 1502. This law requires that U.S. companies carry out supply chain due diligence on their mineral supply chains to ensure that the tin, tantalum, tungsten or gold in their products originating from the Democratic Republic of Congo and neighboring countries have not contributed to armed groups or human rights abuses. In another telling move, in November, the US withdrew from implementing the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), a multi-stakeholder global anti-corruption program for the oil, gas and mining sector. Another clear win for Exxon and Chevron, whose penchant for secrecy threatens to breed corruption.
Unholy Alliance: Kleptocratic Authoritarians and their Western Enablers
Carl Gershman
It is widely understood that corruption is a pervasive problem in many societies and undermines public confidence in the political system and government institutions. The scourge of corruption is generally viewed as a symptom of a larger problem of the failure of judicial, media, and other institutions of accountability in new or developing democracies. In kleptocracies, which is the term used to designate “government by thieves,” corruption is the lifeblood of the system and therefore the heart of the problem.
Karen Dawisha, the author of Putin’s Kleptopcracy and one of the foremost experts on this issue, makes the observation that “in Kleptocracies risk is nationalized and rewards are privatized.” Participation in the spoils of Kleptopcracy is organized and controlled by top political elites, who raid state resources with immunity and impunity. Whistleblowers, investigative journalists, and others who seek to expose corrupt practices become targets of law enforcement and are treated as enemies of the state.
By denying space for moderate political voices that offer possible alternatives to existing policies and leaders, Kleptocracies open the way for extremists. Altay Goyushov, an Azerbaijani scholar and a former Reagan-Fascell Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy, has observed that by repressing peaceful activists and reformers in Azerbaijan, the Kleptocratic regime in Baku “argues that it is taking steps to ensure stability. They have this exactly wrong. By eliminating moderate voices in society, Azerbaijan’s leaders set the stage for an anti-Western environment that will serve as a breeding ground for extremists, who pose a grave security threat to both the region and the West.”
Unlike ordinary corruption, which has generally been considered a problem that corrodes developing democracies from within, Kleptopcracy export their corrupt practices beyond their national borders with an ever-increasing impact felt in new and established democracies alike. The taking of money out of corrupt countries by Kleptocrats is a long-standing practice—think of Mobutu Sese Seko’s Zaire and Ferdinand Marcos’ Philippines. But in the present hyper-globalized era, the scale and sophistication of this activity presents new and serious challenges to democracy. In this sense and as the Panama Papers so vividly reveal, modern Kleptopcracy thrives by crossing borders, in the process projecting a wider, corrosive threat to democracy and its institutions.
Kleptopcracy is a key pillar of resurgent authoritarian regimes that are exercising growing influence around the world. Other defining characteristics of such regimes include a crackdown on civil society, the rise of extremist movements, the failure of governance in many new democracies, the assault on democratic norms in the international system, and propaganda campaigns that are lavishly funded by international media enterprises like the Russian government’s RT. Simply put, these regimes are trying to reshape the rules of the game.
The challenge presented by regimes in Moscow, Beijing, and elsewhere is being taken to an entirely new level by virtue of their projection of illiberal values and standards beyond their own national borders. Just a decade ago, few political observers could have imagined such a development. It’s especially troubling that this growth in authoritarian ambition is taking place at a time when malaise seems to grip the world’s leading democracies.
The need to address the problem of Kleptopcracy is of central importance to activists who are promoting the rule of law and democratic governance in countries ruled by hybrid and autocratic governments. These activists are on the frontlines in the struggle against resurgent authoritarianism where regimes are tightening political controls and closing civic space.
One of them is Khadija Ismayilova, the courageous journalist from Azerbaijan whose investigative reporting established the links between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and his family to massive corrupt enterprises. Ms. Ismayilova was sent to prison on patently trumped up charges. The fact that her arrest and the arrest of other dissidents have not damaged Azerbaijan’s participation in Western institutions is a cause of great concern. As Gerald Knaus pointed out in a July 2015 Journal of Democracy article entitled “Europe and Azerbaijan: The End of Shame,” Azerbaijan’s Kleptopcracy has a profound and corrosive effect within but also beyond the country’s borders. Knaus explains in painful detail the ways in which the authorities in Azerbaijan “captured” the Council of Europe and in the process managed to neuter its human rights work.
Similarly, Rafael Marques de Morais of Angola has reported in World Affairs and elsewhere how that country’s political elite has taken personal control of virtually all of the country’s public wealth derived from minerals and, more recently, from massive investments by China. Here, too, the Angolan kleptocrats do not simply deprive their own country of critically needed resources for improving health, education, and infrastructure, but use this wealth beyond national borders to acquire an influential hand in media and financial institutions inside Portugal, an EU member state. Russia’s Kleptopcracy has managed similar feats in Latvia, also an EU member state.
No country has suffered more from Kleptopcracy than Ukraine. Deeply entrenched and, indeed, institutionalized corruption has been an extraordinary challenge since Ukraine achieved its independence a quarter century ago. But in the four years that former President Viktor Yanukovych was in power, he took the country’s corruption to new heights, enabling the theft of nearly $40 billion of Ukraine’s public wealth. This massive corruption funneled wealth primarily to the president, his relatives, and a limited circle of businessmen around the president. As journalist Oliver Bullough has observed, “In 1991, Ukraine’s GDP was about two-thirds of Poland’s GDP; now it is less than one quarter.” He notes that state corruption on such a scale has ruined Ukraine, “dooming a generation of Ukrainians to poor education, unsafe streets and blighted careers.” This ravaging of Ukraine’s economy and society brought about the EuroMaidan revolt, when millions of people rose up to extract their country from the grip of the kleptocrats and to try to chart a more democratically accountable course.
The fact that these authoritarian regimes are also Kleptocratic makes the challenge facing democracy activists in such countries even more difficult because the Kleptocrats have established an objective alliance with banks and other institutions that make up the global financial system. These institutions readily accept deposits of stolen funds after being laundered through offshore structures. With these assets safely invested and protected within the global system, the Kleptocrats are then free to use their stolen wealth to increase their domination at home and purchase influence abroad, all the while expanding their massive business networks in the West and buying extravagantly priced properties in London, New York, Miami, and other global capitals.
The purchase of multimillion dollar properties, the arrangement of opaque offshore financial instruments, and the laundering of a Kleptocrats public image, do not happen by accident or on its own. Professional intermediaries in the established democracies are critical links for venal Kleptocrats, who seek to move ill-gotten gains from authoritarian systems into the democracies and the international finance system, where the rule of law offers their ill-gotten wealth a safe and respectable haven. As journalist Bullough observes, “only with the help of Western enablers can a foreign kleptocrat transform the ownership of a questionable fortune, earned in an unstable country where jail is often one court decision away, into a respected philanthropist” who can be photographed alongside celebrated international figures and media stars.
Anne Applebaum has noted the irony that while the rule of law prevails in Britain, “over the past couple of decades, London’s accountants and lawyers have helped launder billions of dollars of stolen money through the British Virgin Islands, among other British overseas territories.” Their complicity in Kleptopcracy has corroded the legal integrity of the British system. As Bullough notes, “what Western enablers do is in a sense more egregious than what foreign Kleptocrats do, because in the West we have a genuine, institutionalized rule of law, while Kleptocrats operate in systems where no real rules exist. The result is that Western enablers effectively undermine democracy in foreign countries, even as Western governments lecture those same countries about civil society and the rule of law.” A crucial element necessary for combating modern Kleptopcracy will be bringing the professional intermediaries in the West—the enablers—out of the shadows and into the sunlight.
Kleptopcracy is not just a pillar of modern authoritarianism but also a serious and urgent global threat. Because it is a global challenge, it requires a response that takes the transnational nature of this problem into account. It is therefore critically important to end the symbiotic relationship between kleptocrats and the international financial system. In addition to cooperation among the world’s democratic governments, this will require helping activists and investigative journalists, who are working within kleptocratic countries to fight state theft, to connect with international actors who are trying to monitor the flow of illicit capital and block its investment in the international financial system. Both grassroots activists and international actors will benefit if they can find more effective ways of working with and supporting each other. The activists will find new allies and outlets for their investigative reports, while the international actors will gain useful contact with indigenous groups whose understanding of the way funds are stolen will contribute to the development of laws and strategies to block the receipt of these funds by the global banking system.
Greater cooperation among people fighting Kleptopcracy at different levels might also help efforts to alert the publics in democratic countries to the serious security risks they face if hostile autocracies are allowed to exploit their institutions and legal protections to aggrandize their own power. Just as it is urgent to end the corrupt and cancerous collaboration between the Kleptocrats and their enablers, it is equally important to build a new partnership between the activists fighting for the rule of law in Kleptocratic countries and potential allies in the established democracies who are committed to defending democratic values and norms. Building such a partnership will help protect our own interests and security and advance the cause of democracy at a moment when it is in peril around the world.
This article is based on testimony that Carl Gershman, the President of the National Endowment for Democracy, delivered at a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on June 30, 2016.
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