Abstract
One distinction that I hope has emerged in these case studies is the difference between expertise and professionalism. Professionals, of course, bring expertise to bear in decision making—whether it is acquired by specialized training or in apprenticeship to established practitioners. But professionalism does not consist simply in the exercise of technical skills, using the right tools or methods, in the right way, to address problems at hand. Beyond such qualities, practitioners have fiduciary obligations to specific individuals—their constituents, their clients, their superiors—and to the public as a whole, to improve the quality of public life. Therefore, they need to know what their fiduciary obligations are and how to develop the competence necessary to meet them.
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Notes
Philip Selznick, The Moral Commonwealth: Social Theory and the Promise of Community (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), pp. 244–245.
Quoted by C. K. Yang, “Some Characteristics of Chinese Bureaucratic Behavior,” Confucianism in Action, ed . David S. Nivison and Arthur F. Wright (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1959), p. 139.
See also Pei-Yi Wu, The Confucian’s Progress: Autobiographical Writings in Traditional China (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990). Reflecting a different era and ethos, Malcolm Sparrow commends such qualities as being open-minded and analytical in determining what problem one faces; data-driven in one’s diagnosis; rigorous and honest in measuring progress; creative and experimental in weighing options; and persistent and adaptive in the face of initial failures and setbacks. These are professional, not simply personal, attributes.
Malcolm K. Sparrow, The Character of Harms: Operational Challenges in Control (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 133.
I am aware that I am simplifying a complicated situation, but we need not worry about the complications here. See Yin-wah Chu and Siu-lun Wong, eds., East Asia’s New Democracies: Deepening, Reversal, Non-Liberal Alternatives (London: Routledge, 2010).
For an early formulation, without reference to our cases, see Kenneth Winston, “Moral Competence in the Practice of Democratic Governance,” For the People: Can We Fix Public Service?, ed. John D. Donahue and Joseph S. Nye Jr. (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2003), pp. 169–187.
John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 55–57, 132–140.
For an extended argument, see Jeremy Waldron, Liberal Rights: Collected Papers (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 58–61.
Tu Weiming et al., The Confucian World Observed: A Contemporary Discussion of Confucian Humanism in East Asia (Honolulu, HI: East-West Center, 1992), pp. 10, 49, 108.
Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, trans. and ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), p. 117.
Anthony T. Kronman, “Alexander Bickel’s Philosophy of Prudence,” Yale Law Journal 94:7 (1985), p. 1569. Discussing what he refers to as contextual intelligence, Nye emphasizes skill at diagnosis and aligning objectives with operational capacity and authority, so as to act effectively in the world.
Joseph S. Nye Jr., Presidential Leadership and the Creation of the American Era (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), p. 12.
Some of these strategies are sketched in Kenneth Winston, “Necessity and Choice in Political Ethics: Varieties of Dirty Hands,” Professional Ethics and Social Responsibility, ed. Daniel E. Wueste (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1994), pp. 60–63.
Chad Hansen, “The Normative Impact of Comparative Ethics: Human Rights,” Confucian Ethics: A Comparative Study of Self, Autonomy, and Community, ed. Kwong-loi Shun and David B. Wong (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 79. Each of these criteria deserves more exploration.
See Kenneth Winston, “On the Ethics of Exporting Ethics: The Right to Silence in Japan and the U.S.,” Criminal Justice Ethics 22:1 (2003), pp. 3–20.
This conception is elaborated by Amartya Sen in various writings, including Development as Freedom (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), especially Chapter 1. See, also, Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen, India: Development and Participation, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), Chapter 1.
Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (Chicago: Swallow Press, 1927), pp. 207–209. Dewey’s worry is that, without regular citizen participation in decision making, experts become a social class removed from common society, with their own interests and private knowledge “which in social matters is not knowledge at all.” Indeed, government by experts is just another form of oligarchy. The proper role of experts is not to frame and execute policies but to present the results of their systematic inquiries (which is what they are good at) so that citizens can make informed decisions.
For a compelling historical and analytical account, see Ruth W. Grant, Strings Attached: Untangling the Ethics of Incentives (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011). Grant pays attention to the deleterious effects on character that incentives sometimes have.
Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), pp. 107–111.
While discussing citizen competence, Robert Dahl expresses considerable skepticism along the way about the competence of so-called experts who “are generally no more competent over a range of policies than ordinary citizens, and may even be less competent.” Dahl, “The Problem of Civic Competence,” Journal of Democracy 3:4 (1992), pp. 45–59.
Jon Elster, Sour Grapes: Studies in the Subversion of Rationality (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 35.
The words are John Dewey’s, quoted by Amy Cohen, “Producing Publics: Dewey, Democratic Experimentalism, and the Idea of Communication,” Democratic Experimentalism, ed. Brian E. Butler (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2012), p. 146.
Lant Pritchett and Michael Woolcock develop this theme in “Solutions When the Solution is the Problem: Arraying the Disarray in Development,” World Development 32:2 (2004), pp. 191–212. See also Matt Andrews, The Limits of Institutional Reform in Development: Changing Rules for Realistic Solutions (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013). These authors point out that the propagation of “best practices” leads to what they call isomorphic mimicry, with the result that institutions in developing countries often have the appearance of competence (because they have adopted a foreign design) without actually being competent (because they specify their tasks without taking account of what they in fact are capable of doing).
For a more comprehensive discussion, see Joseph Nye Jr., The Powers to Lead (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), Chapters 3 and 4.
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© 2015 Kenneth Winston
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Winston, K. (2015). Conclusion: Moral Competence in Public Life. In: Ethics in Public Life. Asia Today. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137492050_8
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