Unmasking Administrative Evil

Danny L. Balfour, Guy B. Adams, Ashley E. Nickels

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429778551
• Edition: 5
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Public Affairs & Administration
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The relationship between evil and public affairs, as well as other fields and professions in public life, has come to the fore as institutions of government seek new ways to operate in an environment of extreme mistrust. Unmasking Administrative Evil, 5th Edition argues that the tendency toward administrative evil, as manifested in acts of dehumanization and genocide, is deeply woven into the identity of public affairs. Indeed, ordinary people may simply act appropriately in their organizational role—in essence, just doing what those around them would agree they should be doing—and at the same time, participate in what a critical and reasonable observer, usually well after the fact, would call evil. Even worse, under conditions of moral inversion, ordinary people can all too easily engage in acts of administrative evil while believing that what they are doing is not only correct, but in fact, good. This 5th edition offers important updates, including:

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• A thorough discussion of contemporary virtue ethics as the field has evolved to offer an alternative to technical/rational ethics.

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• An all-new three-part structure (What is Administrative Evil?, History and Cases, and The Future of Ethics in Praetorian Times) designed to aid in course organization and instruction.

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• All-new cases, including an examination of the Flint water disaster, to provide contemporary examples of how populations can be marginalized and harmed by administrative processes that are blind to their consequences until it is too late.

Laying the groundwork for a more ethical and democratic public life – one that recognizes its potential for evil, and avoids state-sponsored dehumanization and destruction – Unmasking Administrative Evil, 5th Edition is required reading for all students of administrative ethics and public service ethics, as well those in other administrative sciences.

Part I

What Is Administrative Evil?

1

The Dynamics of Evil and Administrative Evil

We see through a glass darkly when we seek to understand the cause and nature of evil.… But we see more profoundly when we know it is through a dark glass that we see, than if we pretend to have clear light on this profound problem.

—Reinhold Niebuhr, 1986 (246)

We begin with the premise that evil is an essential concept for understanding the human condition. As one examines the sweep of human history, clearly there have been many great and good deeds and achievements, and real progress in the quality of at least many humans’ lives. We also see century after century of mind-numbing, human-initiated violence, betrayal, and tragedy. We name as evil the actions of human beings that unjustly or needlessly inflict pain and suffering and death on other human beings. However, evil is one of those phenomena in human life that defies easy definition and understanding (Adams and Merrihew, 1990; Formosa, 2006, 2008; Garrard, 2002; Hammer, 2000; Kahn, 2007; Katz, 1988; Mathewes, 2000; McGinn, 1997; Parkin, 1985; Russell, 1988; Sanford, 1981; Steiner, 2002; Zimbardo, 2007; Zycinski, 2000).

Those readers who can look at human history and see no evil may find little interest in this book. Others who acknowledge negative interaction and tragedy in human affairs, but prefer more modern terminology, say, “dysfunctional behavior,” may find our use of a very old word—evil—uncomfortable or even misguided. Still others may readily acknowledge evil in human affairs and find our argument—that evil occurs in a new and dangerous form in the modern age—fairly easy to follow, but will also be cautioned by the counsel of Aldous Huxley (1952, 192):

The effects which follow too constant and intense a concentration upon evil are always disastrous. Those who crusade not for God in themselves, but against the devil in others, never succeed in making the world better, but leave it either as it was, or sometimes even perceptibly worse than it was, before the crusade began. By thinking primarily of evil we tend, however excellent our intentions, to create occasions for evil to manifest itself.

Modernity, Technical Rationality, and Administrative Evil

The modern age, especially in the last century and a half, has had as its hallmark what we call technical rationality. Technical rationality underlies a way of thinking and living (a culture) that emphasizes the scientific-analytic mindset and the belief in technological progress (Adams, 1992). We explain this notion and its historical evolution at greater length in Chapter 2. For our purposes here, the culture of technical rationality enables a new and bewildering form of evil that we call administrative evil. As our title implies, administrative evil is different because its appearance is masked. Administrative evil may be masked in many different ways, but the common characteristic is that people can engage in acts of evil unaware that they are in fact doing anything at all wrong. Indeed, ordinary people may simply act appropriately in their organizational role—in essence, just doing what those around them would agree they should be doing—and at the same time, participate in what a critical and reasonable observer, usually well after the fact, would call evil. Even worse, under conditions of what we call moral inversion, in which something evil has been redefined convincingly as good, ordinary people can all too easily engage in acts of administrative evil while believing that what they are doing is not only correct, but in fact, good.

The basic difference between evil as it has appeared throughout human history, and administrative evil, a fundamentally modern phenomenon, is that the latter is less easily recognized as evil. People have always been able to delude themselves into thinking that their evil acts are not really so bad, and we have certainly had moral inversions in times past. But there are three very important differences in administrative evil. One is our modern inclination to un-name evil, an old concept that does not lend itself well to the scientific-analytic mindset (Bernstein, 2002; Neiman, 2002). The second difference is found in the structure of the modern, complex organization, which diffuses individual responsibility and requires the compartmentalized accomplishment of role expectations in order to perform work on a daily basis (Staub, 1992, 84). The third difference is the way in which the culture of technical rationality has analytically narrowed the processes by which public policy is formulated and implemented, so that moral inversions are now more likely. Our goal in this book is to illuminate at least some of the dynamics in organizations and in public policy that can lead to administrative evil.

Our understanding of administrative evil has its roots in the genocide perpetrated by Nazi Germany during World War II. While the evil—the pain and suffering and death—that was inflicted on millions of “others” in the Holocaust (Glass, 1997) was so horrific as to almost defy our comprehension, it was also clearly an instance of administrative evil. Here we refer to administrative evil as unmasked (although much of it was masked at the time), and we suggest that identifying administrative evil is easier today because the Holocaust was perpetrated by the Nazis (and others complicit with them) and because it occurred well over half a century ago.

The Holocaust occurred in modern times in a culture suffused with technical rationality, and most of its activity was accomplished within organizational roles and within legitimated public policy. While the results of the Holocaust were horrific and arguably without precedent in human history, ordinary Germans fulfilling ordinary organizational roles assisted in and supported extraordinary destruction in ways that had been successfully packaged as socially normal and appropriate (Arendt, 1963). Nothing else in human history really compares with this event, and certainly all else in modern times pales before its example. Although the Holocaust provides the lens through which we can unmask contemporary examples of administrative evil, we are concerned to point out most emphatically that we do not equate our American examples of administrative evil with the Holocaust.

Evil in the Modern Age

Evil remains only a barely accepted entry in the lexicon of the social sciences. Social scientists much prefer to describe behavior while avoiding ethically loaded or judgmental rubrics—to say nothing of what is often considered religious phraseology (Miller, Gordon, and Buddie, 1999). Yet, evil reverberates down through the centuries of human history, showing little sign of weakening in the first decades of the twenty-first century and the apex of modernity (Lang, 1991). As Claudia Card (2002, 28) notes:

The denial of evil has become an important strand of twentieth century secular Western culture. Some critics find evil a chimera, like Santa Claus or the tooth fairy, but a dangerous one that calls forth disturbing emotions, such as hatred, and leads to such disturbing projects as revenge…. Many reject the idea of evil because, like Nietzsche, they find it a bad idea…. Nietzsche’s critique has helped engineer a shift from questions of what to do to prevent, reduce or redress evils to skeptical psychological questions about what inclines people to make judgments of evil in the first place, what functions such judgments have served.

In the modern age, we are greatly enamoured with the notion of progress, of the belief that civilization develops in a positive direction, with the present age at the pinnacle of human achievement. These beliefs, along with the denial of evil, constrain us from acknowledging the implications of the fact that the twentieth century was one of the bloodiest, both in absolute and relative terms, in human history, and that we continue to develop the capacity for even greater mass destruction (Rummel, 1994).

Nearly 200 million human beings were slaughtered or otherwise killed as a direct or indirect consequence of the epidemic of wars and state-sponsored violence in the twentieth century (Bauman, 1989; Eliot, 1972; Glover, 1999; Rummel, 1994). Administrative mass murder and genocide have become a demonstrated capacity within the human social repertoire (Rubenstein, 1975, 1983), and simply because such events have occurred, new instances of genocide and dehumanization become more likely (Arendt, 1963). As Bernstein (2002, iv) states:

Looking back over the horrendous twentieth century, few of us would hesitate to speak of evil. Many people believe that the evils witnessed in the twentieth century exceed anything that has ever been recorded in past history. Most of us do not hesitate to speak about these extreme events—genocides, massacres, torture, terrorist attacks, the infliction of gratuitous suffering—as evil.

If we are to have any realistic hope for ameliorating this trajectory in the twenty-first century, administrative evil needs to be unmasked and better understood, especially by those likely to participate in any future acts of mass destruction—professionals and citizens who are active in public affairs.

Despite its enormous scale and tragic result, it took more than twenty-five years for the Holocaust to emerge as the major topic of study and public discussion that we know it as today. But knowing more about the Holocaust does not necessarily mean that we really understand it, or that future genocides will be prevented (Power, 2002). As we move into Chapters 3 through 7 progressively to examples that occur within our own culture, closer to our own time, and eventually into the present, the dynamics of administrative evil become more subtle and opaque. Here we refer to administrative evil as masked. This is one of the central points of our argument; that administrative evil is not easily recognized as such because its appearance is masked; moreover, in our ordinary roles with our taken-for-granted assumptions about the modern world, we wear the mask.

Is Administrative Evil Public or Private?

While our own academic home is in public policy and administration, and the arguments and examples in the book are largely from the public sector, we believe the arguments hold for all professions and disciplines involved in public life most generally. In other words, as a phenomenon of the modern world, administrative evil is confined to neither the public nor the private sector. Rather, it is a social phenomenon, and its occurrence in private or public organizations is likely to vary according to the political and economic arrangements of particular countries. Further, we believe a similar argument about administrative evil could be made from the perspective of the private sector (Hills, 1987; Mintz, 1985). An obvious starting point could be the American tobacco industry (Hurt and Robertson, 1998), or, more recently, the role of Facebook in the genocide of the Rohingya in Myanmar (Mozur, 2018). We are convinced that administrative evil is a phenomenon of the culture of technical rationality, and as such is socially ubiquitous and certainly not confined to the public sector.

Nevertheless, we argue and present evidence that the tendency toward administrative evil, as manifested primarily in acts of dehumanization and genocide, is deeply woven into the identity of public affairs (and also in other fields and professions in public life). The reality of evil has been suppressed and masked despite, or perhaps because of, its profound and far-reaching implications for the future of both public and private organizations.

Despite what may initially seem to be a negative treatment of the public service, it is not our intention to somehow diminish public service, engage in “bureaucrat-bashing,” or give credence to misguided arguments that governments and their agents are necessarily or inherently evil. In fact, our aim is quite the opposite: to get beyond the superficial critiques and lay the groundwork for a more ethical and democratic public life, one that recognizes its potential for evil and thereby creates greater possibilities for avoiding the many pathways toward state-sponsored dehumanization and destruction (see Chapter 8). Nonetheless, this approach (as with any attempt to rethink aspects of the field) is bound to bring us into conflict with conventional wisdom. A passage from Hirsch (1995, 75–76) conveys one aspect of this issue:

Genocide is a controversial topic that may very well pit the researcher against the state. If the nation-state has been the major perpetrator of genocide or some other form of atrocity, then any researcher investigating this topic must begin to ask critical questions about the nature of the state in general and his or her state in particular. Social scientists are sometimes reluctant to raise critical questions because serious contemplation of them may force the scientists to evaluate or re-evaluate their principles or their connection to their government.

Substituting “torture” for “genocide” in the quotation above demonstrates its contemporary relevance, as we shall see in Chapter 4. Our critical stance toward public affairs aims not so much at any particular formulation of public life, but more at what has not been addressed—the failure to recognize administrative evil as part and parcel of its identity. Administrative evil should be as much a part of public policy and administration as other well-worn concepts such as efficiency, effectiveness, accountability, and productivity.

Administrative Evil and Public Affairs

Likewise, public affairs cannot, in light of this realization, be described only in terms of progress in the “art, science, and profession” of public policy and administration (see, for example, Lynn, 1996) without recognizing that acts of administrative evil consist of something other than uncontrolled, sporadic deviations from the norms of technical-rational public policy and administrative practice, which are often simply assumed to be ethical (Denhardt, 1981). Practitioners and scholars of public affairs, as well as other related fields and professions, should recognize that the pathways to administrative evil, while sometimes built from the outside by seductive leaders, most often emanate from within, ready to coax and nudge any professional down a surprisingly familiar route: first toward moral inversion, then to complicity in crimes against humanity.

Efficient and legitimate institutions can be used for constructive or destructive purposes. The fundamental problem for public affairs, given the ubiquity of administrative evil, is to develop and nurture a critical, reflexive attitude toward public institutions, the exercise of authority, and the culture at large. And as difficult as this may be to imagine, much less to accomplish, even this offers no final guarantee against administrative evil. Responsibility for the prevention of future acts of administrative evil rests, in part, with both theorists and practitioners who understand their role and identity in such a way that they can resist seductive and cunning temptations within moral inversions to apply expedient or ideological solutions to the many difficult issues that confront contemporary public life.

In this view, public administration certainly encompasses, but needs to shift its focus away from the use of sophisticated organizational and management techniques in the implementation of public policy. Public administration must also, and primarily, cultivate a historical consciousness aware of the fearsome potential for evil on the part of the state and its agents, and a societal role and identity infused not just with personal and professional ethics, but also with a social and political consciousness—a public ethics—that can recognize the masks of administrative evil and refuse to act as its accomplice.

Based on the premise that the concept of evil remains relevant and essential for understanding the human condition in the twenty-first century, we make several key arguments in this book:

1. The modern age, with its scientific-analytic mindset and technical-rational approach to social and political problems, enables a new and bewildering form of evil—administrative evil. It is bewildering because it wears many masks, making it easy for ordinary people to do evil, even when they do not intend to do so.
2. Because administrative evil wears a mask, no one has to accept an overt invitation to commit an evil act; because such overt invitations are very rarely issued. Rather, the invitation may come in the form of an expert or technical role that develops in stages, couched in the appropriate language, or it may even come packaged as a good and worthy project, representing what we call a moral inversion, in which something evil or destructive has been redefined as good and worthy.
3. We examine closely two of administrative evil’s most favoured masks. First, within modern organizations (both public and private), because so much of what occurs is underneath our awareness of it, we find people engaged in patterns and activities that can—and sometimes do—culminate in evil, without recognizing them as evil until after the fact (and often, not even then). Second, we look at social and public policies that can culminate in evil; these most often involve either an instrumental or technical goal (which drives out ethics) or a moral inversion u...