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With the standard nod to the majority of upstanding federal workers, President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 issued an executive order that required federal employees to avoid even the appearance of unethical conduct.

Said one former head of the Office of Government Ethics: "Take a look at the language in the executive order: 'might result in or create [the appearance of] impropriety.' You can hang anybody on that language. That's my problem with it. A guy who wants to screw you can screw you.... It's not a good enough standard for me."

Johnson, and Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy before him, and Carter, Bush, and Clinton after him, contributed to a web of laws and regulations that today make up the most extensive set of rules governing the ethics of government officials in history.

America's executive branch political appointees and career officials must receive regular ethics education and training; file periodic disclosure forms that delve deeply into their assets and incomes; avoid activities that would create a conflict of interest; avoid using their public office for private gain; decline any gifts of consequence; steer clear of certain outside employment, activities or income; adhere to restrictions on post-federal employment; and follow certain regulations when negotiating future employment.

A bureaucracy sprang up to institute this regime. Officials' actions and finances are now screened or reviewed by the FBI, the Office of Personnel Management, the Office of Government Ethics, inspectors general, the Public Integrity Section of the Justice Department's Criminal Division, the White House and Congress. Almost every agency in government has its own ethics office, overseen by a designated agency ethics officer. The public can obtain and review top officials' financial disclosure forms.

Does this ethics regime make the government more ethical?

Not only is there no evidence that it does, scholar G. Calvin Mackenzie suggests in a new book, Scandal Proof: Do Ethics Laws Make Government Ethical?, but the ethics edifice also has the unintended consequence of driving top-notch, talented people away from public service.

Mackenzie reviews the history of federal ethics laws and regulations and then tries to find empirical evidence that the burgeoning of such rules in the last half of the 20th century made the government more ethical. Instead he finds a bureaucracy that measures itself by activity rather than results - the number of forms filed, the number of investigations conducted and the number of people convicted - as opposed to the level of unethical behavior.

The level of unethical behavior, it turns out, is impossible to determine, because no one's ever measured it. There's no baseline. There's also no standing definition, since what's deemed ethical has shifted over the years.

Because of those problems, anecdotes have ruled the history of ethics in American government. An isolated scandal provokes a call for more stringent ethics restrictions, which politicians respond to by passing laws or setting up regulations. History repeats itself and the bureaucracy grows. A general fear of unethical behavior generates an intensely specific set of procedures and a mountain of paperwork.

But the bureaucracy probably hasn't made people more ethical, Mackenzie says. Or as Plato said, "Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws." The good people wind up wasting their time filling out paperwork and waiting for the bureaucracy to complete its pre-emptive checks on their ethics. "Every new layer of ethics regulation diminishes the willingness of talented people to pay the price of public service," Mackenzie writes.

Mackenzie's solution is partial deregulation, recognizing the need to balance ethics and expediency. He calls for the elimination of financial disclosure requirements for career federal workers, a streamlined set of disclosure forms for political appointees, and far fewer FBI background checks.

"Deregulation will make public service more attractive to talented people," Mackenzie writes. "Will there be more ethical misbehavior as a result of deregulation? Perhaps, but we doubt that the impact will be significant - if there is one at all. Most federal officials stay out of trouble; most did so before the ethics regulations were put in place."

While Mackenzie's book is about ethics, similar reviews could be conducted on the massive legal and regulatory frameworks that govern other aspects of public policy, such as the civil service and federal administrative procedures. In those areas too, measures tend to focus on activity rather than results.

As with President Johnson's focus on appearances in 1965, the status quo may be fine for many politicians. Sometimes the appearance of activity is more advantageous than the reality of results.

COMMENTS

• I agree the ever increasing volume of rules in this area coupled with the "bureaucracy" to regulate it is not only ineffective it is costly, and ultimately producing the opposite effect of what was initially intended. I am required to file the Financial Disclosures every year. I am keenly aware of the importance of my adherence to strict ethical standards particularly in light of my position. I will also tell you that not one minute of my time spent in classes or preparing or filing the required paperwork associated with the Ethics regulations is anything but a waste of time. For one thing my spouse is a career civil service blue collar employee and neither of us own any stock or interests in anything but our TSP. So year after year I faithfully sign a five page document that is blank except for my name etc. My second point is that as you so astutely stated in your article we keep creating more and more burdensome regulatory requirements on the honest federal worker because of the most current scandal committed by those unethical members (mostly in the highest offices of the legislative and executive branches) that were not stopped or even held back by the considerable amount of ethics regulation already in place! We increasingly hobble, the horse that stayed in the barn of their own accord because of the horse that has already escaped despite all efforts to close the door. President Lyndon Johnson was well known for his compulsion to "micro-manage". Everything from tactical operations in the action in Viet Nam to what was reported in the press was subjected to this "control" mania. The current ethics laws were ill conceived and born of this dysfunctional public policy and have not improved or matured with age, only become increasingly elephantine and onerous. Over almost 40 years the ever increasing volume of ethics requirements has not only NOT been effective it is counterproductive. It has become a self serving and self perpetuating bureaucracy. It is increasingly more expensive to meet the expanding training and reporting requirements, police the policy, and has nothing to show for it. All this ethics law and requirements certainly didn't stop the president of the United States in the Clinton Administration from plunging this country into a public media circus that exposed us ad nauseam to the sexual exploits going on in the Oval office. Don't tell me about "the appearance of impropriety"!! Conversely, there is a misconception that the "best and brightest" that America has to offer are scared away from public service by these stupid restrictions. If they are then I submit they are probably of the same caliber as Andrew Fastow. I guess it depends on your definition of the "best and brightest", certainly the CFO of Enron was considered among the best and brightest at one point in his career. We, the People of the United States of America need dispel the idea that only the second rate, "stupid, lame, and lazy" enter government service. We need to appeal to the natural sense of "honor, courage and commitment" that the recruiters for the United States Marine Corps utilize so well. We need to let the American public realize that the vast majority of public servants are ethical and upstanding in their everyday conduct without artificial and ineffective "morality legislation". That the people who enter federal service sacrifice high salaries, perks, even some privileges taken for granted by the general populace, (i.e. political activity under the Hatch Act). That these dedicated people do this in service to their country. We need to generate a sense of pride in becoming a true patriot through entering into government service. If this becomes the standard to which you appeal in recruiting efforts ethics will not need to be regulated. It will become part of the self identity associated with the important job of Federal Civil Service. Margaret L. Carter Posted February 24, 2003 5:00 PM