A Study On The Ethics Of A Government’s Public Decision-making

A government’s public decision-making in Chinese refers to the act or process of choosing and making a plan, a project or a strategy made by a government agency which aims at solving a relevant public problem in order to realize and safeguard public interests. As a noun, it refers to a plan, a project or a strategy made by a government agency which aims at solving a public problem in order to realize and safeguard public interests. There exists a correlation between a government’s public decision-making and ethics, in that the latter makes up an important basis for the former, exercising an influence on the act of the subject and the object of a government’s public decision-making and penetrating into every link of the process of a government’s public decision-making.Does a government’s public decision-making involve value? The answer is positive. According to the science of policy and the science of administrative ethics, a government’s public decision-making involves value. From the perspective of utilitarianism and the perspective of morality, a government’s public decision-making involves values. From the angle of the logical premise of utilitarianism, a government’s public decision-making involves values such as effect, result or happiness, etc. From the basis of utilitarianism, a government’s public decision-making involves such values as effect, efficiency, etc. According to the theory of morality, a government’s public decision-making involves values such as fairness, impartiality or justice, etc. For a government’s public decision-making, there are diverse principles of value and standards of value which need sequencing in value. In a historical and realistic view, a government’s public decision-making carries priority values. In terms of efficiency, fairness is the priority value of a government’s public decision-making; in terms of good, correctness is the priority value of a government’s public decision-making; compared to individual good, however, public good of a government’s public decision-making does not take absolute priority. Case analyses show that Chinese protecting policy of social welfare has its non-fairness which leads it into an ethical plight.A government’s public decision-making is closely related to its target or purpose and its means. From a perspective of ethics, the target choice of a government’s public decision-making is oriented towards the choice of such targets as public interest, justice and efficiency, etc. The target choice of public interest is a general one, while the target choice of justice and the target choice of efficiency are specific ones. From a perspective of ethics, the choice of scientific means, the choice of democratic means and the choice of legal means are the means choices of a government’s public decision-making. The choice of scientific means is a technical one of a government’s public decision-making; the choice of democratic means is a social one; and the choice of legal means is a standard one. The good of purpose and the correctness of means of a government’s public decision-making should be combined with each other, which is fundamental for a government’s public decision-making to have ethical value.There exist injustices in a government’s public decision-making. A government’s selfishness, the negative influence of interest groups and the defect in the supervision and accountability system of decision-making are responsible for the injustices in a government’s public decision-making. Therefore, it is necessary to explore an institutional protection for a government’s public decision-making, i.e. setting up and perfecting a system for opening a government’s public decision-making, setting up and perfecting a system of interest adjustment for a government’s public decision-making, and setting up and perfecting a supervision and accountability system of decision-making. The injustices in the current Chinese government’s public decision-making are the inequality of citizen’s participation in the government’s public decision-making, the intergenerational unfairness in economic policies, the identity discrimination in employment policies and the sexism in politics and employment policies. Therefore, to strengthen the construction of a system for social groups to express their interest, to strengthen the construction of a system for a government’s public decision-making, to strengthen the construction of a system for reducing unspoken rules and to strengthen the construction of a system for eliminating discrimination become an institutional protection for the justice in the current Chinese government’s public decision-making. There is still an issue of ethical protection for a government’s public decision-making. The morality of the decision-making subject becomes a value guide for a government’s public decision-making. The development of the awareness of fairness, the awareness of responsibility and the awareness of citizenship is the basic content of the development of decision-making subject’s morality, and it serves as an ethical protection for a government’s public decision-making.