Supporting politicians’ skill to handle moral issues
2014 (English)In: Proceedings of IPSA 23rd Congress on Political Science, 2014: Challenges of contemporay governance, Montreal: The International Political Science Association , 2014Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]
In politics it is necessary, for leaders as well as for political parties, to have the ability to handle all kinds of moral problems that may arise during any political activity. Failure to address moral issues properly has significant impact on a political organization’s influence on society, affecting election results, image, and public relations as well as internal processes. It may have a detrimental effect on the morality of citizens and society. Competence in handling moral problems in a satisfying way is therefore very important for any political leader and political organization. Education in ethics should equip politicians for difficult decisions, and ethical competence is therefore the most important goal of training programs. We need reliable and effective methods to stimulate and support political leaders’ ethical competence. In order to achieve ethical competence for political leaders we need to describe and assess psychological processes aimed at the handling of moral problems: How political leaders reason in front of moral problems, how they solve these problems, and how they make their decisions. Ethical skill in psychology, and in accordance to the classical philosophical position, is understood as the basis and the aim of ethical competence of leaders. Politicians’ ethical competence and confidence is defined as the use of a problem-solving and decision-making cognitive ability, independent of particular political, ideological or moral values. Based on that, we can construct valid assessment tools and training programs that support the acquisition and use of ethical competence and skills.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Montreal: The International Political Science Association , 2014.
Keywords [en]
politicians, ethics, moral, skill, competence, education, training, support
National Category
Political Science Psychology Ethics Philosophy
Research subject
Human-Computer Interaction
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-238366ISBN: 978-2-924444-01-06 (print)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:uu-238366DiVA, id: diva2:770956
Conference
IPSA, 23rd Congress of Political Science
Projects
ETHCOMPCEST2014-12-112014-12-112014-12-18