Moral Dilemmas, Theoretical Confusion

Abstract

Editor's NoteThe Disputatio for this issue involves the value pluralism and its relevance for public administration. The three participants are knowledgeable scholars and the topic an important one. Don't miss a chance to become better informed on this important philosophical concept and the contention surrounding its applicability and relevance for public administration. AbstractIn philosophical ethics, value pluralism is the idea, often associated with Isaiah Berlin, that there are many objective, conflicting, even incommensurable values and that this necessitates often tragic moral choices. Several administrative theorists (notably Wagenaar and Spicer) have argued that value pluralism has farreaching implications for public administration. The cogency of their arguments is, however, questionable. This article critically examines the uses of value pluralism in administrative theory and concludes that its claimed implications are neither valid, nor exhaustive, nor congruent. Hence, the implications of value pluralism for public administration (if any) remain open to debate.

Civil society and the legitimacy of executive power

“…The obvious objection to this analysis is that modern liberal societies are characterized by pluralism with respect to core values, and therefore the liberal state has no single purpose, or at least none that can be specified incontrovertibly (Overeem and Verhoef, 2014;Spicer, 2010;Wagenaar, 1999). The dominant response among proponents of the vocational model has not been to deny this, but rather to observe that a liberal state is nonetheless committed to certain principles; these are thin enough to be neutral with respect to the most contested values, but thick enough to serve as the basis for a strong conception of the morality of the civil service.…”

In Defense of Value Pluralism in Public Administration

“…Moreover, as his provocative work in defense of the politics-administration dichotomy amply illustrates, he is not afraid to pick a fight but rather seems to relish it. Overeem here, along with his colleague Jelle Verhoef (2014), takes on Hendrik Wagenaar and me for our attempts to enlist the ideas of value pluralism to support our somewhat differing arguments for a politically engaged form of public administration. They argue, even were value pluralism true, and it seems clear they have some doubts, the implications that Wagenaar and I draw from it are, to use their words, “neither logical (they do not follow), nor exhaustive (other implications are also possible), nor congruent (they do not match to each other)” and they assert that, therefore, the idea of value pluralism, “taken by itself, does not necessarily lead to the prescriptions that [we] claim to derive from it.” Worse still, as they see it, the implications for public administration that Wagenaar and I claim to derive from value pluralism simply reflect our own particular political values or ideologies and moral choices rather than the ideas of value pluralism per se.…”