Institutional Limitations on Ethical Reasoning

This chapter discusses how institutionalized rules, norms, and organizational solutions impede the possibility to adopt green ethical reasoning in policy processes. It is argued that despite decades of reform activities, three fundamental Weberian ideals tend to persist, which limit the possibilities for ethical reasoning in policy processes: instrumental rationality; the politics-administration distinction; and public administration as a formal authority hierarchy (Weberian bureaucratic ethos). The chapter concludes that to better enable ethical reasoning requires that the Weberian bureaucratic ethos is relaxed so that conflicting values are allowed to be openly discussed at different stages of public policy processes.