Unmasking administrative evil / Guy B. Adams, Danny L. Balfour.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Adams, Guy B.

Contributor:

Balfour, Danny L.

Series:

Advances in public administration

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Public administration--Moral and ethical aspects.

Public administration.

Physical Description:

xxx, 207 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Thousand Oaks, Calif. : Sage Publications, [1998]

Summary:

Although social scientists generally do not discuss "evil" in an academic setting, there is no denying that it has existed in public administration throughout human history. Hundreds of millions of human beings have died as a direct or indirect consequence of state-sponsored violence. The authors argue that administrative evil, or destructiveness, is part of the identity of all modern public administration (as it is part of psychoanalytic study at the individual level). It goes beyond a superficial critique of public administration and lays the groundwork for a more effective and humane profession.

Contents:

Dirty Hands xxii

Hubris xxiii

1. The Dynamics of Evil and Administrative Evil 1

Administrative Evil and Public Administration 5

Failing to See Administrative Evil 6

Understanding Evil 9

Perspective and Distance 12

Language and Dehumanization 14

The Taken for Granted 15

The Social Construction of Evil 17

The Social Construction of Compliance 19

The Stanford Prison Experiment 22

Individual, Organization, and Society 25

2. The Framework of Administrative Evil: Modernity and Technical Rationality 29

Historical Studies in Public Administration 31

The Progressive Era: A Second Hamiltonian System 33

The Progressive Era Legacy for Public Administration 34

Technical Rationality and Professionalism 36

Modernity and Technical Rationality 38

Recent History of Epistemology 38

The Confluence of Science and Technology 39

Building a World With No History 40

Diminished Historical Consciousness in Public Administration 41

Three Examples of Modernity in Public Administration 43

Modernity, Legitimacy, and Public Administration 46

Professionalism and Scientific Rigor in Public Administration 47

The Implications of Modernity 49

Public Administration: Past and Future 50

3. Administrative Evil Unmasked: The Holocaust and Public Administration 53

The Holocaust 54

Historical Interpretations of the Holocaust and the Role of Public Administration 56

Legalizing Evil: The German Civil Service and the Third Reich 60

Implementing Evil: The German Civil Service and the Holocaust 64

Perfectly Safe Ground? 70

4. Administrative Evil Masked: From Mittelbau-Dora and Peenemunde to the Marshall Space Flight Center 73

Mittelbau-Dora 74

The Beginning 76

The Mittelwerk Factory 78

The Catastrophic End 78

Peenemunde 80

Operations Overcast and Paperclip 85

Postwar Chaos 87

Denazification 88

The von Braun Team 95

Huntsville, Redstone, and the Marshall Space Flight Center 97

Saturn and Apollo 99

Administrative Evil 104

5. Organizational Dynamics and Administrative Evil: The Marshall Space Flight Center, NASA, and the Space Shuttle Challenger 107

The Marshall Space Flight Center, Challenger, and the Pathway to Administrative Evil 109

A Flawed Design 110

NASA's History as an Organization 112

Problems in the Apollo Program 113

Important Differences Between Apollo and the Shuttle 114

The Challenger Disaster 118

An Extraordinary Launch 119

The MArshall Space Flight Center 122

The Evolution of a Destructive Organizational Culture at Marshall 125

The Pathway to Administrative Evil 133

6. Public Policy and Administrative Evil 135

Public Policy and Problem Solving 136

Critiques of the Problem-Solving Approach to Public Policy 138

Surplus Populations and Public Policy Metaphors 143

Welfare Policy and Illegal Drug Policy 147

Racism and Affirmative Action 151

Immigration Policy 155

Operations Overcast and Paperclip 157

7. In the Face of Administrative Evil: Finding a Basis for Ethics in the Public Service 161

Necessary But Not Sufficient: The Legacy of the Technical-Rational Approach to Administrative Ethics 162

The Moral Vacuity of Administrative Ethics 166

Reconstructing a Public Ethics 171

Communitarianism, Citizenship, and Public Ethics 173.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 181-196) and index.

ISBN:

0761906681

076190669X

OCLC:

38430998