Admission requirements
This course is part of;
The Erasmus Exchange Programme (Public Administration)
The Minor Bestuurskunde: Openbaar Bestuur, Beleid en Management
The Minor Public Administration: Multi-Level Governance (Elective)
Description
This course offers an introduction to and discussion of important ethical approaches and moral issues in contemporary politics and public administration. As the title indicates, two notions are central to this course: public values and (public) ethics. The notion of public values, firstly, is adopted as a means to understand and articulate the special character of the public sector as it conceptualizes the difference between a public and a private sector in terms of the values (supposedly) served in each. The notion of (public) ethics, secondly particularly directs our attention to the systematic reflection on everyday morality and thinking about the proper fulfillment of public office in particular. Holders of positions in the public sector are continuously facing moral questions and choices. Ethics intends to help them tackle those questions by offering arguments for particular answers and options over others. As such, we discuss a range of ethical theories, such as virtue ethics, social contract ethics, deontology, and utilitarianism. In addition, we apply these to public sector problems. In particular, we discuss specific issues of public wrongdoing (such as corruption and/or other integrity violations) and controversial public behavior (such as the problems of dirty and many hands or lacking integrity and corruption).
Course objectives
TBA
Timetable
On the right side of programme front page of the Prospectus you will find links to the timetables, uSis and Brightspace.
Mode of instruction
TBA
Assessment method
TBA
Reading list
TBA
Registration
Registration via MyStudymap is possible from Tuesday 14 July 2026 13:00h after registration for the entire minor. Register for every course via MyStudymap. Some courses of the minor have a limited number of participants, so register on time. Registration for the exam is mandatory.
Leiden University uses Brightspace as its online learning management system. After enrolment for the course in MyStudymap you will be automatically enrolled in the Brightspace environment of this course.
More information on registration via MyStudymap can be found on this page.
Please note 1: Registration for the resit of an exam is mandatory, this has to be done by the student and can be done **** from TBA until 10 days before the exam. Until 5 days before the exam you can email OSC and fill in a form.****
Please note 2: guest-/contract-/exchange students do not register via MyStudymap but via uSis. Registration via uSis is possible from Thursday 16 July 2026 after registration for the entire minor.
More information on registration via MyStudymap can be found on this page.
Leiden University uses Brightspace as its online learning management system. After enrolment for the course in MyStudymap you will be automatically enrolled in the Brightspace environment of this course.
Contact
Remarks
In order to learn effectively in this course in particular, it is essential to understand that studying (mostly) online requires an active stance from students. The course is structured in a way that enables you to learn a lot from it, but this can only work when you are actively present on the online platform, ask questions, read and re-read literature, and critically (but respectfully!) engage online and offline with other students in the course.