Transparency A Regime Value Linked With Ethics

The argument presented in this article is a relatively basic one but one that has been overlooked by students of public administration ethics. The analysis is grounded in the writing and ideas of John A. Rohr. Rohr's body of work includes a focus on ethics and regime values. I show that transparency and ethics are two terms frequently conflated in common usage. Rohr developed the concept of regime values, which is a central component of this article. My first key point is that governmental transparency fits the definition of a regime value laid out by Rohr. Second, while transparency and ethics are frequently conflated, ethics is conceptually broader than transparency.