10-30-2025 9:55am

Public Agenda: Reclaiming The Public Soul: Restoring Integrity In Aftermath of Power by Dr Shellie Bowman

John L Williams Editor

Public Agenda

Introduction: The Silence After the Storm

After every failure of power comes the silence of disillusionment. Yet silence does not mean peace. It is the quiet in which citizens question whether their institutions still deserve their trust, and public servants wonder if their service still matters. When authority drifts from accountability, what remains is not governance but theater, a performance of leadership stripped of its moral center.

In this final installment of The Management of Power series, we move beyond the theories of McGregor, Kahneman, and Tummers to explore the aftermath; what happens when the exercise of power, once intended for the public good, becomes corrupted by personal ambition or fear. If Part One explored the origins of ethical drift and Part Two dissected the moment of collapse, this third installment asks the most urgent question of all: How do we reclaim the public soul once power has been mismanaged?

The answer is neither purely institutional nor entirely personal. It is civic. It begins with a moral reckoning, an acknowledgment that leadership without humility becomes tyranny, and governance without empathy becomes control.

You can read the complete article at

https://open.substack.com/pub/drshellieb/p/reclaiming-the-public-soul-r…

You can find all of Dr Shellie Bowman’s Articles at https://substack.com/@drshellie?r=va8ka&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=profi…

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