ICTs in the Contemporary World seminar

Re-Instating an Ethic of Bureaucratic Office

Paul du Gay
Department of Social Sciences, Open University

Postponed due to illness - a new date will be announced shortly

Thursday 1 June 2006
6.30 - 8.30 p.m.


Fifth Floor, Tower One

In recent years there has been a considerable upsurge of interest in the concept of 'office' within the social sciences, humanities and among scholars of public law and public management. Although there are a number of disparate, often discipline specific, factors contributing to this renewed focus, two rather more general aspects of the 'turn' to office stand out. First, a rekindled interest in the moral attributes of public agency inspired not only by a number of well publicized political controversies but also by growing ethical uncertainties attendant upon a rapid and equally controversial series of managerial reforms of a wide range of public institutions. Secondly, a historical, philosophical and practical concern with the manner in which certain prominent contemporary conceptions of moral agency presume a dichotomy between moral autonomy, on the one hand, and subordination to higher authority, on the other, such that to hold a subaltern status and to exercise moral agency are represented as fundamentally incompatible. Although it would be somewhat problematic to conjoin both of these strands into something akin to a unified field, there are nonetheless clear points of connection between them. One crucial area of overlap concerns the forms of moral agency appropriate to the performance of political and governmental offices.

This paper seeks to make a case for the continuing indispensability of office-specific conceptions of moral agency in the realm of governmental and administrative action. Its main focus of concern, however, is with the office of the state bureaucrat. This category of 'person' has been the object of significant practical reform over the last two decades, and serious debate continues concerning whether such incessant reform has undermined key aspects of the role and function of the office to which this persona is attached. Indeed, rhetorics of office have played and continue to play an important part in framing debates about the status of recent reforms of the state administration as an institution of government.

Paul du Gay is Professor of Sociology and Organization Studies in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Open University. His recent publications include The Values of Bureaucracy (ed.) OUP, 2005.

Please note places will be available on a first-come-first-serve basis - registration is not required.

For any further queries regarding this seminar or to request information about future events please contact Maha Shaikh, Research Coordinator

Page last updated 08 March 2007

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