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Administrators and Accountability: The Plurality of Value Systems in the

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Article  in  Public Integrity · September 2008

DOI: 10.2753/PIN1099-9922100403

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Administrators and Accountability

Author

Udo Pesch

Institute for Environmental Studies

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

De Boelelaan 1087

1081 HV Amsterdam

Telephone: 0031205989556

E-mail: udo.pesch@ivm.vu.nl
Abstract

This article addresses the juxtaposition of two images of the administrator. The first image is that

of the administrator-as-a-functionary. The problem of this image is that administrators might be

inclined to evade their individual moral responsibility. The model of hierarchical accountability

that corresponds to this first image enables the administrator to do so. The second image, that of

the administrator-as-a-citizen, is forwarded in theory to resolve this problem. This second image

presents the administrator as someone who is also individually accountable for his or her actions.

Though the introduction of this alternative image of the administrator is supported, it is claimed

that the two images sometimes lead to contravening courses of action, while there are no

institutional arrangements for administrators to deal with such a dilemma. This article concludes

with an outline of the conditions that have to be fulfilled for such an arrangement.
Biographical Sketch

Udo Pesch has recently finished his PhD-research on the foundations of public administration as

part of the Renaissance of Public Administration-project at the Department of Public

Administration, University of Leiden. He currently works at the Institute for Environmental

Studies of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

2
 Administrators and Accountability

Introduction

There is an extensive amount of literature in public administration theory suggests that

administrators have to deal with a multiplicity of value systems, which implies that individual

administrators may have to balance different values during concrete decisions – and as such,

laying great a moral responsibility upon their functioning. Van Wart (1996) provides an oversight

of this literature, and deduces five values systems that administrators have to take into account in

concrete decision-making activities, each of these value systems is derived from a different type

of interests that characterises the function of the administrator. Van Wart concludes that:

"Administrators' decisions cannot be determined but by the thorough consideration that they

give all legitimate values in formulating the best possible decision when various values compete"

(Van Wart 1996, 532). Petter (2005) develops a typology of eight types of responsibility that each

tries to ensure the responsibility of individual public employees, and he asserts that: "The

[typology] posits inherent conflicts. A professional bureaucrat may be internally conflicted when a

professional expectation contrasts with a moral obligation"(Petter 2005, 211)

This article will build further on these claims. It will be confirmed that administrators

might become the victim of moral dilemmas, so that they are bestowed with a heavy burden.

However, it will also be claimed that public administration theory should not just observe the

potentiality of an administrative moral dilemma, but it should also try to develop ways to support

the individual administrator trapped in such dilemmas. In this article a conceptual framework will

be developed with which it becomes possible to approach such moral dilemmas. It does so first

by emphasizing two images of administrators that are thought to convey the most elementary

moral systems that administrators deal with.

3
 The first of these images presents administrators as functionaries, and in this image

administrators are given the assignment to fulfil the public interest in a neutral way. In the other

image, administrators are seen as citizens, and therefore they are allowed to directly contribute to

the realisation of the public interest. In short, the public interest confronts an administrator with

two different kinds of responsibilities. This description of the administrator's functioning in

terms of a confrontation of images is not a recent one. In the United States, a discussion about

the ethical role of the administrator has been going on since the Friedrich/Finer debate in the

1940s (cf. Yang and Holzer 2005). The two administrative positions proposed here can be related

with the approaches of 'compliance' and 'integrity', which are for instance used by the OECD

(1996). Maesschalck notes that many authors emphasise that these two approaches "should be

seen as the opposite ends of a continuum" (Maesschalck 2005, 22). This article, however, will

claim that there are occasions in which the two images of the administrator are incommensurable,

and that they cannot be plotted on a straight line. The two images are not always mutually

reinforcing (cf. Cooper 1998, 163), but often imply contradictive courses of action.

The image of the neutral functionary follows more or less out of Weber ideal-typical description

of bureaucracy (Weber 1972). Increased attention for the image of the administrator as a citizen

goes hand in hand with a growing attention for the normative aspects of public administration

(see Menzel 2005; Rutgers and Schreurs 2006; Lewis 2006), the administrator is more and more

seen as someone who is a moral agent, who bears responsibility for his actions. In administrative

practice, these moral concerns have been manifest in the emergence of integrity protocols and

ethical codes (see Van Wart 1996; Van Blijswijk et al. 2004).

As the dual commitment to the public interest evokes two kinds of responsibilities for

administrators, they are bound to get involved in such conflicts. This article will make clear that

there is no singular ethical code that allows the evasion of such conflicting responsibilities, and it

4
will suggest that it is more sensible to face the reality of these conflicts and acknowledge them to

be part of the administrator's job.

To do so, the next section will present a general outline on the notions of 'responsibility'

and 'accountability'. I will claim that these notions can be placed against certain practical contexts,

called 'accountability structures', which, in their turn, are closely connected to well-known

institutional contexts such as the market and the state. Section three will introduce the 'model of

hierarchical accountability' as the traditional way to handle accountability issues in the domain of

public administration. This model has some shortcomings which evoke adjustments in the form

of an alternative model which presents the 'administrator-as-a-citizen'. Despite the attractiveness

of this alternative model, I will claim in section four that this model leads to new problems,

namely the potential collision of the two opposed forms responsibility that emerge from these

models. It is claimed that it is counterproductive to evade such conflicts and that it is wiser to

intentionally acknowledge them. Instead of looking for codes of conduct, institutional

arrangements that allow an administrator to come to terms with moral dilemmas are thought to

be needed. The conditions for such arrangements are forwarded in the final section; the

ombudsman model is proposed to be an example of such an arrangement.

Accountability Structures

The institutional constellations of modern culture – which features public administration as one

of its main elements – rest deeply on the assumption that an individual person is fundamentally

free to act according to his or her own choice. The image of social reality being composed by

autonomous individuals has been developed in the philosophy of liberalism, and even though

sociological and psychological insights may lead to doubts whether the individual is a genuinely

autonomous being, the most important institutional contexts that have been developed in

5
modernity, such as the liberal democratic state, the free market, and the judicial system are all

founded on the idea that humans are the guardians of their own destiny.

The reverse side of the assumption of autonomy is that individuals are responsible for their

own choices, which means that they not only enjoy the rewards of certain decisions, they also

personally pay the price for the consequences of these decisions. In this section, I will develop a

conceptual framework with which it becomes possible to elucidate the relation between the

choices of the individual, and the system of rewards and prices that are associated with these

choices. Moreover, I will introduce the idea that this system of rewards and prices is attached to

certain social contexts, which will be called 'accountability structures'. It will prove that albeit its

schematic character, the notion of an accountability structure allows a quick, but thorough

reconsideration of well-known institutional domains.

The concept of responsibility is no straightforward issue. According to Bovens, the concept

suffers from a basic lack of clarity, as it is a "complex idea that has many equally plausible

definitions, though these definitions are rarely compatible" (Bovens 1998, 22). As noted above,

the fundamental freedom of choice aligns with the description of social reality that emerges from

the political philosophy of liberalism (Minogue 1963). In this philosophy, individuals are

considered to be autonomous and as such they are free to do whatever they want, as long as they

do not harm other persons (Mill 1985 [1859]). This freedom is the most fundamental value of

liberalism; and the obligations that come with it are taken as a fact. In the case of an individual

actor bringing harm to another person, this actor and no one else should bear the moral burden

of this decision or action. Furthermore, a strong connection is made between freedom,

responsibility and causality. A person assumes that his or her actions have direct consequences,

and he or she tries to tune his actions in advance to these consequences. Therefore, he or she

evaluates the possible consequences of at least some of his or her potential courses of actions.

6
 The form of responsibility that is related to the fundamental liberty of the individual can

be seen as the active form of responsibility, which will be distinguished here from the passive form

of responsibility (Bovens 1998, 26). This passive form of responsibility is denoted as

'accountability'. Active responsibility presumes that actors reflect upon their actions before these

are undertaken; one can be held accountable for one's actions only after the action is performed:

"In the case of passive forms of responsibility, one is called to account after the event and either

held responsible or not" (Bovens 1998, 27). Accountability not only entails the moral burden of

an action or a burden, but it also enables the possibility that persons will be either rewarded or

punished for their actions and decisions.

Like active responsibility, accountability is also connected, at least ideally, to the causal

relation between a person's thoughts, actions and eventual consequences as well. In that sense,

accountability is the simple reversal of active responsibility: someone has deliberated on the

consequences his or her actions may yield, and afterwards that person is asked for the content of

these deliberations and punished or rewarded. However, there are some practical problems

preventing that accountability can be seen as the straightforward mirror image of responsibility.

A first problem is that there may be a gap between the reasons given and the actual

content of the deliberations, which may be unknown even to the person involved. Motivations of

people sometimes are deceptive even to themselves. A second problem is that in hindsight the

consequences of someone's actions are known, while he or she may not have thought of those

consequences beforehand. This inability to see in the future implies that persons cannot always

be held accountable for the consequences of their actions, even though they were undertaken

deliberately. A third problem is that responsibility is a category that is strictly connected to the

individual's capacity to deliberate. However, as we will see in this section, accountability can also

be used in the case of collectives of individuals.

7
The criteria with which actions are to be assessed as either positively or negatively are rather

flexible, in fact, these criteria depend on the social context. Social domains such as law, market,

state, and organisations lay down their own standards of 'good' and 'bad' behaviour. In order to

make these different contexts comparable, I will introduce the notion of 'accountability forums'

(Bovens 1998). In the light of these forums, accountability is placed inside the more or less

confined boundaries of a certain social domain.

If accountability is presented in the framework of a forum, accountability implies that one

has to open him- or herself to other people so that his or her acts can be assessed (Nieuwenburg

2001, 32). It is this public aspect of a certain forum that enforces people to behave accountably,

because in general people may be inclined to behave well, some people are not so well-disposed,

while in other cases it is simply hard to know what is considered to be good behaviour. The

presence of an accountability forum enables people to learn what counts as good behaviour (Van

Gunsteren 1994, 64). They are punished for doing things wrong and rewarded for doing things

right.

Macro-scale social contexts are most easily adaptable in terms of accountability forums.

For instance, Schulz (2004) describes private life, the private sector, the public sector, and the

nonprofits sector as social contexts which each disposes over a distinct ethical language. Upon

the basis of Van Gunsteren (1994, 64) these contexts could be called 'empirical forums'.

In order to develop a more developed intuition about these empirical forums, I will

elaborate shortly upon a number of these, starting with the accountability forum of the market.

The question connected to this forum is, how can producers of goods and services be enforced

to perform in a responsible way? Before this question can be answered, 'responsibility' needs to

be defined in the context of the market. I reckon that economic responsibility can be identified as

the pursuit of rational self-interest. A commercial producer who acts responsible, is trying to

optimise his or her set of preferences, which in general contains values like 'making profit' and

'preserving the enterprise'.

8
 The accountability forum that enforces producers to act responsibly is the structure of the

market itself: the presence of competition requires that producers act according to consumer

demand. Here, one meets the famous notion of the 'discipline of the market', which implies that

if a market actor does something 'wrong' he will be 'punished'. The exact definition of 'wrong' is

to be determined by the selection criteria of the consumers. In economic reality this could mean

that certain products are too expensive or not good enough, so that people will not buy them.

Another case of 'wrongness' may arise when an agent produces goods and services that people

simply do not want. The criteria appear to be highly whimsical, as demonstrated by certain

fashionable, but useless gadgets, such as hula-hoops and garden gnomes. Indeed, the discipline of

the market may be blind sometimes, but in a situation of competition it is always rigorous: in the

end, failing agents go bankrupt.

Another accountability forum connected to the market is that of law. Both producers and

consumers have to comply with legal guidelines, especially concerning the contractual fulfilment

of commercial transactions. If transactional contracts are not met, the responsible agent has to be

punished: he or she has to be fined or imprisoned. Of course, law does not operate just on the

domain of the market; it also imposes rigid restrictions on the functioning of the state and civil

society.

The rule of law cannot be the only accountability forum restricting the functioning of the

state, because laws are formulated by the officials of the state gathered in parliament. Members of

parliament also have to be enforced to behave responsibly; they have to be subordinate to the

will of the citizenry. This subordinate disposition is enforced by the introduction of periodical

elections. Members of parliament have to compete for the favour of the citizens; otherwise they

will be punished at the next election. At the same time, parliament itself is an accountability

forum. It is there to control the executive branch of the state. If an accountable executive – such

as a minister – fails, he or she is punished by sending him away through the parliamentary

9
representatives. If these representatives fail, they will be punished by the electorate that no longer

votes for them.

The accountability forums of the market and the parliamentary system are substantially

different than that of law. Neumann (1957, 166) presents the inadmissibility of retroactive law as

one of the essences of the understanding of law. As such, the criteria of law are fixed. In case of

both the political and the economic domain, one never knows what will be assessed as right or

wrong; the set of criteria is highly elastic.

Another difference between the workings of law and those of the parliamentary system

concerns the connection between the agent and the act itself. In law, individuals are thought to

be fully responsible for their actions (Simmonds 2000). However, in the parliamentary system the

connection between the agent and the action is loosened, sometimes up to the extent that it no

longer exists: a minister can be held accountable for the actions of a civil servant he or she has

never even met. As I have indicated earlier, unlike the active form of responsibility, accountability

is no strictly individual category; it can be allocated to an organisation, or to someone who

represents that organisation.

Besides the fact that organisations can be hold accountable for behaviour by the

individuals who are gathered in that organisation, an organisation can also be seen as an

accountability forum itself. It can be inferred that bureaucratic organisations as accountability

forums take in a mediating position between the level of the individual and the level of

encompassing social domains such as the state and the market. On the one hand, organisations

take over the conceptual place of the individual in the market and the state. Although

organisations cannot act responsibly in an active manner, they can be held accountable as a whole

– which becomes clear from the example of the minister who is held accountable for the

functioning of his or her department. On the other hand, organisations relate the criteria of

responsible behaviour in the setting of the market or the state towards an individual who is a

10
member of that organisation. Organisational directives are the translation of market or state

restrictions into the confined social context of the organisation.

The capacity to hold an individual accountable for his actions and decisions gets a curious

twist when an individual acts in name of an organisation. For in that case, his or her actions or

decisions are not merely his or her own, they are taken in the light of an organisational aspiration.

A major topic in organisational literature concerns the issue how to align the individual's

motivations and aspiration with that of the organisation (e.g. Simon 1997), another question to be

posed however is how individuals can be held accountable for the activities that they take on

behalf of an organisation. In nucleus, this question refers to the so-called 'problem of the many

hands', which will be addressed in the next section. This problem is especially relevant as it is

connected to the 'model of hierarchical accountability', which is the traditional ethical model that

accompanies administrators. The model of hierarchical administration will also be presented in

the next section.

The Problem of Many Hands and the Model of Hierarchical Accountability

Until now, I have predominantly addressed the relation between individual decisions and

accountability forums. In liberalism, the motivation of individuals to act is attributed to the

pursuit of their own private aspirations and interests. However, in public administration one

typically deals with the pursuit of public interests, which are conceived as the interests of the social

collective that is comprised by a national state.

The parliamentary system has been set up as the platform in which such public interests

are articulated. The legitimacy of this system is guaranteed by its functioning as an accountability

forum, as was presented above. It is not just controlled by the electorate; parliament also controls

the executive branch of the state. This executive branch is designated to enact the public interest,

as it was articulated – or at least, accepted – by parliament.

11
 This nested structure that is entailed by the separation of power-doctrine has been

introduced by Locke (1999 [1690]) and Montesquieu (2002 [1748]). The methods for holding

state officials accountable rested upon the assumption that individuals acted autonomously, or

could at least be monitored rather directly. However, since the doctrine was formulated, the

nature of the apparatuses of the state has changed immensely, as the nineteenth century

witnessed the rise of huge bureaucracies. The sheer extent of these bureaucracies put stress on

some of the constitutive ideas about the relation between accountability and causation. The

minister who is formally accountable for the performance of his or her department, cannot be

considered to be causing or even monitoring everything that takes place inside of the department.

It has become a key characteristic of large-scale organisations, both in the sphere of the market

and in the sphere of that state, that it is hard to establish a causal chain between an organisational

activity and a specific individual choice.

To cope with this opacity, organisations are frequently treated as if they are individuals.

The characteristics of a human individual are then transferred to the level of a unified system of

different individuals. To a certain extent this solution is legitimate: in the light of the notion of an

accountability forum, the market, parliament and law can hold an organisation as a whole

accountable for its conduct. In that case, the performance of the organisation as a whole has to

be taken into account. Still, the transition from individual accountability to organisational

accountability is no straightforward matter. Accountability forums have a reciprocal relation with

the capacity of active responsibility, which is considered to be a strictly individual category. This

discrepancy between organisational conduct and individual responsibility has led to the

formulation of the problem of many hands, as it was named by Dennis Thompson (1980, 905).

According to Bovens (1998, 47), the problem of many hands raises the question to which

extent organisational activities can be decomposed into discrete responsibilities of individual

functionaries. In other words, can an individual member of the organisation be blamed for

organisational misconduct? A number of alternative strategies have been developed to deal with

12
this issue. In concern with public administration, the notion of hierarchical accountability is

prevailing (Bovens 1998, 74): whoever is at the top of the organisational pyramid takes the blame

for organisational misconduct. The accountability regime of the state appears to be strongly

based on this model: for instance, a minister is held accountable for the achievements and failures

of his or her department.

Hierarchical responsibility was constructed to control considerable organisations, but also

to enable a way to hold organisations accountable for their behaviour. In general, the name of

Max Weber is attached to the principle of hierarchical accountability (Bovens 1998, 75). Weber's

treatment of this principle is connected to his identification of the bureaucratic ideal-type (Weber

1972, 128). As state organisations approach the conditions of this ideal-type to an increasing

extent, they become a threat for democracy: "wherever possible, political democracy strives to

shorten the term of office by election and recall and by not binding the candidate to a special

expertness. Thereby democracy inevitably comes into conflict with the bureaucratic tendencies

which by its fight against notable rule, democracy has produced" (Weber 1958a, 226).

To reduce this threat, Weber summons both the political leader as the civil servant to

stick to their jobs, for this is not just their functional, but also their moral responsibility:

To take a stand, to be passionate – ira et studium – is the politician's element, and above all the

element of the political leader. His conduct is subject to quite a different, indeed, exactly the

opposite, principle of responsibility from that of the civil servant. The honor of the civil servant is

vested in his ability to execute conscientiously the order of the superior authorities, exactly as if

the order agreed with his own conviction. This holds even if the order appears wrong to him and

if, despite the civil servant's remonstrances, the authority insists on the order. Without this moral

discipline and self-denial, in the highest sense, the whole apparatus would fall to pieces. The

honor of the political leader, of the leading statesman, however, lies precisely in an exclusive,

personal responsibility for what he does, a responsibility he cannot reject nor transfer (Weber

1958b, 95).

13
Weber acknowledges the rise of state organisations and sees the potential threat they contain. In

contrast to the political realm, bureaucracy cannot be directly controlled by parliament. Without

knowing the name it received later, Weber seems to recognize the problem of many hands, and

he tries to solve it by asking the administrator and the politician to behave according to their

ascribed roles. This is considered to be their professional responsibility, and it is a matter of

personal honour instead of an explicit set of rules.

The model of hierarchical accountability figures strongly in the minds of civil servants,

politicians and in those of the general public. The duty of civil servants to follow the wishes of

their political leader is still held in high esteem. Nevertheless, the model of hierarchical

accountability has been subject to a lot of criticism. It builds on the depiction of the

administrator as a neutral element that executes law, whereas this depiction appears to be flawed.

Thompson (1987) presents the problem of the many hands as an explicit critique on Weber's

model of hierarchical responsibility:

Weber's model vastly simplifies the task of ascribing responsibility to public officials since it

places most public officials most of the time beyond the province of moral responsibility. As long

as they follow the orders of their superiors and the procedures of the organization, they are not

responsible for any harmful results of their actions […]. The empirical deficiencies of the

hierarchical model do not necessarily defeat it as a normative standard […]. But even if a more

hierarchical structure of government is desirable, the hierarchical model is not a satisfactory basis

on which to ascribe responsibility in the structure of government that now prevails. Where

discretion and dispersion abound, the model obscures the identity of the officials who actually

exercise power (Thompson 1987, 42-43).

The empirical shortcomings of the hierarchical model of accountability have been addressed in

public administration for quite a while. For instance, Paul Appleby (1967 [1945], 29) states that

14
public administration is the "eighth political process", and administrators contribute to the way

policies are implemented in reality by their individual actions. As such, their actions influence the

way the public interest is finally effectuated in society, whereas these actions are not authorized

by parliament (also see Neumann 1957, 15)

A pervasive theoretical reason that the activities of administrators in charge of executing

laws and policies cannot be covered by explicitly formulated rules is that administrators apply

general rules to particular events, while such general rules underdetermine action (Nieuwenburg and

Rutgers 2001, 201). Administrators have to rely on their ability of judgment to deal with these

cases. In case of an administrator having to make a choice without having any explicit guidelines

at his disposal, his or her ability to prospectively reflect on the effects of a decision plays an

important part. The question then becomes, how to judge? How does an administrator decide

what to do? Public administration theorists introduce the image of an administrator as a citizen as

a possible way out (e.g. Frederickson 1991, 409; Bekke 1995; Bovens 1998). Indeed, this image

evades the pitfalls of the depiction of the neutral, machine-like administrator, and as such

deserves considerable attention in public administration theory. However welcome this

conception of the administrator, it brings along problems which have not yet been attended in

literature.

The image of an administrator as a mechanical implementer of rules does not correspond with

the description of an administrator capable of administrative judgment. The introduction of the

administrator as a citizen, builds forth on an Aristotelian notion of citizenship and entails that a

citizen can be seen as an individual who actively participates in collective decision making (see

Aristotle 1992). While in the model of hierarchical accountability the public or private status of

an organisation is no matter of concern, administrators are now supposed to fulfil the public

interest. They have to address and maintain communal values and principles.

15
 The depiction the administrator as a citizen does have some profound consequences. It

changes the dominant conception of the function of the administrator and it also changes the

dominant conception of the citizen. In the model of hierarchical accountability, the administrator

is conceived as someone who is positioned outside of the institutional frames of policy-making;

there is a perceived distinction between the realm of politics and the realm of administration

(Aberbach et al. 1981). As such, administrators are a lesser citizens than 'ordinary' individuals. They

give up a part of his individual autonomy. This is why the image that presents the administrator

as morally neutral is in line with liberal philosophy: if administrators are conveyed as cogs in a

machine, they do not impose their own will upon other individuals. 'Ordinary' citizens suffer

from a split personality: as participators in the process of political decision-making – for instance

in the case of voting –, they are guided both by their private interests and by the interests of the

community he is part of (Benn and Gaus 1983). If administrators are conveyed as citizens, they

are even more of a citizen than ordinary individuals; the administrator can only be guided by the

interests of the community.

The implication of the image of the administrator as a citizen is that he or she is not

conceived as a person who is fully obedient. Instead of complying to rules that are handed

toward them, administrators have to judge in every single act whether these rules are legitimate.

This leads to a situation that public administrators have "to play a role in the preservation of the

community and independent citizens" (Bovens 1998, 166), and as such cannot "hide behind the

orders of their superiors" (Bovens 1998, 167).

As representatives of a state organisation, administrators may find themselves in a

situation where they have to choose between different moral standards. On the one hand, the

administrator has to follow rules; on the other hand, the administrator has to serve communal

values. This moral dilemma gives rise to the so-called 'problem of the dirty hands'. In the next

section some of the consequences of this problem for the individual administrator will be

outlined, in addition to a recollection of its long history in political thought.

16
The Problem of the Dirty Hands

It was Machiavelli who discovered that the realm of the state brought along a morality of its own.

In his book The Prince (2000 [1513]), Machiavelli describes how a statesman has to break

conventional moral codes in order to achieve the well-being of the state. With that, Machiavelli

suggested that there are two moral domains, the first containing the prevailing morality that is

applied in everyday life, and the second containing the morality that fits the preservation of state.

To Machiavelli this second domain of morality included the ruthless pursuit of power

(Hampshire 1989, 163-164). Despite its age, Machiavelli's description of two distinct moral

domains still appears to be up to date (see Jacobs 1992). Hampshire presents three essential

elements that are valid for the modern political association:

(a) Public policy is a greater thing, as Aristotle remarked, and an agent in the public domain

normally has responsibility for greater and more enduring consequences and consequences that

change more men's lives.

(b) Violence, and the threat of violence or of force, have always been in prospect in public life and

in the execution of public policies. In the normal run of things the moral problems associated

with the use of force, and with war and violence, do not now arise in private life. The occasional

use of violence, and the normal uses of force and of threats of force, introduce their own moral

conflict.

(c) In modern politics, and particularly in a democracy, one is reasonably required to protect the

interests of those whom one in some sense represents, whether they be one's followers in a party

or fellow citizens. There are obligations and duties attached to representative roles (Hamsphire

1991, 49).

17
Hampshire claims that if one takes (a) and (c) together: "the conclusion to be drawn is that there

is an added responsibility in public affairs, and, secondly, this responsibility falls most heavily on

the consequences of policies in the lives and fortunes of great numbers of persons unknown to

those forming the policies" (Hampshire 1991, 49).

This added responsibility of a person involved in the public realm might lead to a moral conflict, also

in the case of an administrator who is both a functionary as a citizen. Individuals sometimes have

to choose between their own moral convictions and the responsibilities that are vested in them as

public officials. It is this conflict, which has been named 'the problem of the dirty hands' (Walzer

1973). This problem can be described as a public official who acts against moral principles to

fulfil the public good (also see Benn 1983). As the dominant moral principles are strongly

individualist (Taylor 1989), decisions made in name of the public good are generally seen as moral

transgressions.

Michael Walzer claims that this problem is a central feature of political life that not merely

arises as an occasional crisis for an unfortunate politician, but which is a systematic and frequent

event of political life. He gives three reasons why politicians are so persistently troubled by the

problem of the dirty hands, which are highly reminiscent of Hampshire's essential elements of

the modern political association. The first one is that the politician acts on behalf of the

community. The second is that politicians rule over the community. The third is that the

victorious politician has the capacity to use violence (Walzer 1973, 162-164). As the problem of

the dirty hands is an irrefutable facet of political life, politicians have to be prepared to get their

hands dirty. The lesson taught by Machiavelli is 'how not to be good' (Machiavelli 2000, 117;

Walzer 1973, 164). Politicians have to accept the consequences of dirty hands in advance. One of

these consequences, and the consequence that will trouble the politician most, is the feeling of

guilt. If politicians have to choose between two opposing moral claims, they will always suffer

18
from feelings of guilt, no matter what the choice, for they would always transgress an accepted

moral rule (Walzer 1973, 173).

The fundamental feature of moral dilemmas is that they cause agony. If one

acknowledges the existence of two moral systems which are not reducible to each other, and

which are both taken into account in a particular action, the ensuing action will be a painful one.

A crucial aspect of moral life is that one is aware of doing something morally wrong (Thompson

1987, 13). In its turn, it implies that one experiences remorse (see Pasquerella and Killilea 2005).

Walzer predominantly considers politicians in his account on the 'problem of the dirty hands'.

However, his findings do not exclude administrators. If one acknowledges that administrators

play a legislative role, and especially if one conceives administrators to be citizens that pursue the

public interest, the problem of the dirty hands also becomes relevant for public organisations. In

the remainder of this section, I will elaborate on the way this problem plays a role in public

organisations. I will argue that administrators constantly meet instances in which they have to

make 'dirty hands'. Nevertheless, the moral burden of administrators is generally not recognized,

and therefore administrators appear to have no choice but to reason away their 'dirty hands'.

Therefore, the conception of the administrator-as-a-citizen requires the establishment of

accountability forums that enable the administrator to function as citizens.

Looking at examples given in literature of instances of the problem of the dirty hands, it appears

that they are merely marginal cases. They occur during grand disturbances of the general social

stability, such as wars or terrorist threats. However, if one takes a closer look, the daily practice of

the administrator is overflowing with situations that give rise to dirty hands. As mentioned earlier,

this daily practice consists to a large extent of making administrative judgments. In each of these

judgments an appeal is made to the deliberative capacities of an administrator. He or she needs to

decide on how to deal with an actual event, given the rules to follow and the principles and values

19
of the community. In all of these cases, the decisions of an administrator have an all too real

effect on the lives of people.

The most conspicuous of these cases appear in the daily work of the administrators who

interact with the public, a group of administrators that Michael Lipsky in his well-known book

distinguished as 'street-level bureaucrats' – however, one must not forget that civil servants

involved in preparing legislature might be confronted by the same questions (see Page 2003).

Lipsky focuses on policemen, social workers, teachers and other public servants "who interact

with and have wide discretion over the dispensation of benefits or the allocation of public

sanctions" (Lipsky 1990, xi). Lipsky characterises the work of these street-level bureaucrats as

follows: "the reality of the work of street-level bureaucrats could hardly be farther from the

reality from the bureaucratic ideal of impersonal detachment in decision making. On the

contrary, in street-level bureaucracies the objects of critical decisions – people – actually change as

a result of the decisions" (Lipsky 1990, 9).

As such, street-level bureaucrats are constantly caught up in difficult situations. Their

decisions affect people and might even be painful to certain people, or deprive them of their

income and their dignity. Inflicting such damage upon people may induce strong feelings of guilt.

If administrators would hold themselves personally responsible for the outcomes of their deeds,

their life would surely consist of suffering. So how do street-level bureaucrats deal with these

problems?

The first route to 'solve' these problems is the denial of administrators to bear their

individual share of responsibility by referring to their obedience to orders. Merton (1952, 365)

coins this mentality the infamous 'bureaucratic personality' or even 'bureaucratic virtuoso', whose

attitude is characterized by a displacement of goals. Besides following rules, Lipsky (1990, 83)

claims that administrators may also seek refuge in the routine-like nature of their activities. Not

only do administrators fall back on routines, they invent them. In street-level bureaucracies

routines are institutionally created in order to diminish the torment of individual decision-making.

20
In other words, the presence of 'many hands' is used as an excuse to reason away the problem of

the dirty hands.

Public administrators appear to be caught up between the commands of two moral

domains, which makes their jobs an emotionally stressful one. At the same time, this stressful

side of the administrator's job is generally ignored. Although the image of the administrator-as-a-

citizen gets attention in literature, in practice the administrator is still generally conceived as the

one who implements rules or policies of which the main traits are established in the political

domain.

Simultaneously, there seems to be more and more attention for the individual

responsibilities of the administrator; he or she is obliged to act responsibly, to appeal to his or her

moral standards, without recognizing that these moral standards are far from unambiguous. An

additional, and perhaps most relevant, problem is the absence of a proper accountability forum

that counterweights the newly found responsibilities of the administrator. But which conditions

have to be fulfilled in such an accountability forum? The next, and final, section of this article

tries to hand over a number of important criteria and considerations.

Moral Experience

The problem of the dirty hands boils down to the fact that public officials sometimes have to

break their moral codes in order to preserve them – just like Machiavelli taught. A problematic

aspect is that these occurrences cannot be arranged: it makes no sense to construct new rules for

cases in which rules may be broken. First, this would only lead to a recursive question whether

there are cases in which this new rule may be broken. Second, there are two distinct sets of moral

values, of which a hierarchy cannot be given in advance. As such, no rule can be designed that

prescribes what to do in every case.

21
 This problem does not mean that there are no options in this matter. On the contrary, the

acknowledgement of the active responsibility of the administrator has to be accompanied by an

accountability forum that gives the administrator some more grip on the communal principles

and values with which he or she is involved. Such an accountability forum would provide

administrators with an external frame of reference, so that they know how certain actions are

evaluated.

Establishing these accountability arrangements is hard. Most of the conceptual

frameworks used in the study of public administration involve a passive form of responsibility –

notably laws and organisational procedures –, and as such are not capable of dealing with these

problems. In principle, administrators were never supposed to have legislative capacities; their job

was to implement rules and policies as formulated by parliament. Even though the discretionary

space of the administrator is recognised in the study of public administration, it appears that this

space is still conceived in terms of the original institutionalisations of the administrative apparatus

(see Pesch 2005)

Indeed, an accountability forum has to be congruous with the ideas of liberal democracy,

and it recognises and acknowledges the nature of the administrator's role as a citizen. This implies

that no procedural arrangement will ever take away the possibility of a moral dilemma. Nor will it

remove the moral experience of an administrator. On the contrary, it will give an external

framework with which administrators can shape their moral experience. By making it possible for

administrators to recognize their moral dilemmas as moral dilemmas, they may have a better

chance of coming to terms with their consequences. Terms not only more acceptable for the

administrators themselves, but also for the public which they serve.

To be able to conceive an administrator as someone who is responsible in an active

manner – to understand administrators as responsible citizens –, their particular reasons for

choosing a certain course of action need to be explored. It is in such a choice that the specific

22
order of values of an administrator becomes apparent. In other words, the administrator has to

be seen as an individual who experiences his functioning in a moral sense (Minogue 1963).

What then can one do to educate administrators in such a way that their moral principles

are congruous with the wishes of the community? To begin with, administrators should have a

repertoire of principles and values at their disposal that they can incorporate into their

deliberations, and consequently in their actions. An accountability forum needs to be established

in order to 'channel' the content of this repertoire.

Nevertheless, it would be unrealistic to expect too much from the possibility to pass on

and check up a repertoire of principles and values. The core of values which belongs to such a

repertoire of principles can only be relatively small as the political ideology of liberalism restricts

an all too extensive interference with the prevailing values in civil society. In the end, the most

important values in a liberal society belong to the private domain, which should be left

untouched by the state and its officials.

Another difficulty is that having a certain repertoire of principles and values does not

determine the actual decisions of administrators. It only guides them through their deliberations.

The actual outcome of these deliberations will always be unpredictable, as it is not just a moral

character that makes a moral decision. More frequently it is the other way around: the moral

decision makes the moral character (Minogue 1963, 78). Administrators have a considerable

chance to come across moral dilemmas that contribute to the formation of their moral character.

However, as administrators were never made aware of this possibility – their functioning is

predominantly formulated along the lines of passive responsibility and a hierarchical chain of

command –, the administrators will not consider the entanglement in such a dilemma as a

dilemma. Consequently, they might reason the moral burden away as something not belonging to

their functional tasks.

The existence of a proper accountability forum will never be able to determine the

decisions of individual administrators. However, if such a forum is internalized into their

23
deliberative repertoires, it increases the chance that administrators will make their decisions along

the lines of this accountability forum.

In administrative practice, some arrangements can be found that come close to this description

of the prerequisites of an accountability forum. Of these arrangements, the function of an

ombudsman, as it exists in many countries and in some American states (Caiden 1983; Hill 2002;

Allmendinger et al. 2003), probably converges most with these prerequisites. Such an

ombudsman investigates and addresses complaints reported by individual citizens about certain

administrative acts. In that way, the public can address administrative behaviour in a direct way,

and express which actions are in line with the 'public interest'. In the report of the ombudsman,

the legitimacy of the administrative act at stake is assessed, and thus administrators can calibrate

their own acts with this assessment. Of course, the function of the ombudsman has its

shortcomings, as it involves human judgment, susceptible to subjectivism, manipulation, and

error – that is why it is quintessential for the ombudsman's to account for his or her findings in

public.

Still, one has to be aware that there is neither a single best design of a 'proper'

accountability forum, nor a perfect one. Different articulations are possible, each of them having

their specific strengths and weaknesses. Nevertheless, it is necessary to acknowledge the reality of

moral dilemmas, which have to be addressed in administrative practice, one way or the other. If

not, the moral experience of administrators will have no external point of reference;

administrators will be left to themselves or to a close circle of colleagues. The result will be the

avoidance of responsibility and clutching at routines, which is one thing we have to avoid at all

costs.

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