Unmasking Administrative Evil

by Unknown

• ISBN13: 9780765623317
• ISBN10: 0765623315
• Edition: 3rd
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2014-11-17
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

The authors argue that the tendency toward administrative evil, as manifested in acts of dehumanization and genocide, is deeply woven into the identity of public affairs, as well as other fields and professions in public life. The common characteristic of administrative evil is that ordinary people, within their normal professional and administrative roles, can engage in acts of evil without being aware that they are doing anything wrong. Under conditions of moral inversion, people may even view their evil activity as good. In the face of this indisputable danger, this book seeks to 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 hidden pathways that lead to state-sponsored dehumanization and destruction.

Table of Contents

Foreword to the Third Edition

Foreword to the Revised Edition

Foreword to the First Edition

Acknowledgments

Introduction and Overview

The Dynamics of Evil and Administrative Evil

Modernity, Technical Rationality, and Administrative Evil

Evil in the Modern Age: Is Administrative Evil Public or Private?

Administrative Evil and Public Affairs

Dirty Hands

Hubris

Understanding Evil

The Roots of Administrative Evil: A Psychological Perspective: Distance, Perspective and Moral Disengagement

Language and Dehumanization

The Taken-for-Granted

The Social Construction of Evil

Individual, Organization, and Society

Compliance, Technical Rationality, and Administrative Evil

Evil and Organizations

The Social Construction of Compliance: The Stanford Prison Experiment

Modernity and the Dominance of Technical Rationality: Technical Rationality and the Evolution of Modern Professionalism

The Moral Vacuity of Technical-Rational Professionalism

Compliance in a Culture of Technical Rationality

Failing to See Administrative Evil

Administrative Evil Unmasked: The Holocaust and Public Service

The Holocaust and Administrative Evil: Historical

Interpretations of the Holocaust and the Role of Public Service

Legalizing Evil: The German Civil Service and the Third Reich

Implementing Evil: The German Civil Service and the Holocaust

Adolf Eichmann and the Banality of Administrative Evil

Eichmann: Exceptional or Banal

Perfectly Safe Ground?

Administrative Evil Masked: From Mittelbau-Dora and Peenemnde to the Marshall Space Flight Center

Mittelbau-Dora: The Beginning

The Mittelwerk Factory

The Catastrophic End

Peenemunde

Operations Overcast and Paperclip: Post-War Chaos

Denazification

Bringing Them Over

The Von Braun Team: Huntsville, Redstone, and the Marshall Space Flight Center

Saturn and Apollo

Administrative Evil

Organizational Dynamics and Administrative Evil: The Marshall Space Flight Center, NASA, and the Space Shuttles Challenger and Columbia

Organizational Dynamics and the Pathway to Administrative Evil

The Marshall Space Flight Center, Challenger, and the Pathway to Administrative Evil: A Flawed Design

NASA's History as an Organization

The Space Shuttle Program

The Challenger Disaster: An Extraordinary Launch

The Marshall Space Flight Center

The Evolution of a Destructive Organizational Culture at Marshall

The Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster

Return to Flight

The Pathway to Administrative Evil

Public Policy and Administrative Evil

Public Policy and Problem Solving: Critiques of the Problem-Solving Approach to Public Policy

Surplus Populations and Public Policy Metaphors: Welfare Policy and Illicit Drug Policy

Immigration Policy

A Shameful Historical Precedent

Operations Overcast and Paperclip

The Evacuation and Relocation of ôAll Persons of Japanese Ancestryö: ôThe Decision Nobody Madeö

The Military Trump Card in Wartime

Implementation

Denouement

Surplus Populations, Moral Inversion, and Administrative Evil

Administrative Evil in the Twenty-First Century: Abu Ghraib, Moral Inversion, and Torture Policy

The Road to Abu Ghraib: Redefining Torture

Torture and Abuse in Interrogation Policy and Procedure

Detainee Operations in Untenable Conditions: Detailing the Abuses

A Benighted Prison

Intelligence Operations in Iraq

Blurring the Boundaries

Making Sense of the Senseless: The Individual Perpetrator

Administrative Evil and Dehumanization

Expiating Evil and Administrative Evil: Searching for a Basis for Public Ethics

Expiating Evil and Administrative Evil: Large Group Identity

The Myth of Pure Evil

Financial Reparations

Forgiveness and Repentance

On the Potential for Expiation

Reconstructing Public Ethics: Necessary but Not Sufficient: The Technical-Rational Approach to Public Service Ethics

The Challenge of Administrative Evil

The Context for Public Ethics: Liberal Democracy

Putting Cruelty First

Deliberative Democracy

Cruelty, Deliberation, and Administrative Evil

References

Index

About the Authors

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