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Document 1 of 1 IS AUTHORITY IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION SEPARABLE FROM AUTHORITARIANISM? PERSONALITIES, INSTITUTIONS, AND RESISTANCE Author: Eagan, Jennifer L ProQuest document link Abstract: This paper explores the relationship between authority and authoritarianism, and the significance of this relationship to public administrators and their practice. I argue that authority and authoritarianism are not distinct, and that public administrators should rethink the value of authority as a justification for action. I explore two sources of authority/authoritarianism, personality and institutions, through the works of George Orwell, Theodor Adorno et al. (1950), and Michel Foucault. Though I do not posit a root cause of authority/authoritarianism, I suggest ways that public administrators can reduce their reliance on authority as a justification through self-awareness and the resistance of the institutional roles that they take on. In conclusion, I link the resistance of political authority to theories that undermine epistemological authority. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT] Links: Linking Service Full text: Headnote ABSTRACT This paper explores the relationship between authority and authoritarianism, and the significance of this relationship to public administrators and their practice. I argue that authority and authoritarianism are not distinct, and that public administrators should rethink the value of authority as a justification for action. I explore two sources of authority/authoritarianism, personality and institutions, through the works of George Orwell, Theodor Adorno et al. (1950), and Michel Foucault. Though I do not posit a root cause of authority/authoritarianism, I suggest ways that public administrators can reduce their reliance on authority as a justification through self-awareness and the resistance of the institutional roles that they take on. In conclusion, I link the resistance of political authority to theories that undermine epistemological authority. AUTHORITY AND AUTHORITATIANISM: REFRAMING THE DEBATE What is authority? Typically, in contemporary democracies, authority is considered to be a variant of power conferred upon people and institutions by the will of the people. Authority is not inherent, but granted on the basis of democratic decision-making. Social position or expertise does not guarantee positions of authority because all authority is given from outside the individual who gains authority. However, social position and expertise do enter into the collective decisions on who gets into positions of authority. In contrast to authority, authoritarianism is the seizure of power in spite of the will of the people, and consolidating power in the hands of a few over and above the people. Authoritarianism tries to determine and impose the will of the people on them from without. However, there is a connection between authority and authoritarianism, as the shared root of the two words indicates. So-called legitimate authority can degenerate into authoritarian practices. Sometimes the will of the people undermines itself with a desire for order that results in wanting someone else to take the reigns. In the West, we tend to have a healthy suspicion of authority precisely because of this tendency of established legitimate authority not to remain under the control of the will of the people. Authority has a tendency to disconnect itself from the will of the people, and the will of the people tends to have trouble asserting itself in opposition to authority. In this section of the paper, I will refine the definitions of authority and authoritarianism with the help of Hannah Arendt and others, and show that they are not as distinct as we might like to think. If the link between authority and authoritarianism is too close for comfort, perhaps the value of authority should be put

into question as well. In her essay, "What is Authority?," Hannah Arendt (1968) considers the political crisis of the loss of authority in the twentieth century. She parallels this loss with the concurrent social and metaphysical crises of the losses of tradition and religion. Authority, tradition, and religion constitute what Arendt calls "the Roman trinity" (p. 140). Arendt defines authority as the need to posit a firm and common foundation for political decision and action beyond the continued re-creation of that foundation by the political actors themselves. In Western thought, traditional views of law and political authority posit such a foundation. Law, once established, has a certain sacred status as a pre-agreement that human intervention cannot easily change. Similarly, authority is often posited as being conferred by virtue of position, not by personhood or character. The position of authority is a structural placeholder that various persons can enter into, but that the persons themselves do not change. Once authority is established through law or position, obedience to the authority is mandatory. Arendt elaborates that authority entails obedience, but not power or violence. Since authority always demands obedience, it is commonly mistaken for some form of power or violence. Yet authority precludes the use of external means of coercion; where force is used, authority itself has failed. Authority, on the other hand, is incompatible with persuasion, which presupposes equality and works through a process of argumentation. Where arguments are used, authority is left in abeyance. Against the egalitarian order of persuasion stands the authoritarian order, which is always hierarchical. If authority is to be defined at all, then, it must be through contradistinction to both coercion through force and persuasion through arguments. (1968, pp. 92-93) By Arendt's account, authority may not be hierarchical, but it is also not dialogical. The perceived source of authority is not its reasoned creation by human beings, but must somehow seem to lie outside of human processes. Authority stems from an unquestioning obedience to something that appears to be beyond the reach of current and novel human decision-making. Tradition and religion would seem to follow this same pattern, as providing unchangeable and commonly held truths from ancestors or deities. Arendt continues parenthetically, The authoritarian relation between the one who commands and the one who obeys rests neither on common reason nor on the power of the one who commands; what they have in common is the hierarchy itself, whose Tightness and legitimacy both recognize and where both have their predetermined stable place, (p. 93) Even though Arendt makes the distinction between authority and authoritarianism, both are insulated from argument and neither are established through violence alone. The crucial difference seems to be the source of the relationship and the mutual acceptance of an external foundation, the existence of the hierarchy itself. Authority stems from an external truth that both the one issuing the command and the one who obeys hold to be immutable. Participants in the relationship of authoritarianism share an abiding faith in the legitimacy of the social order that makes them unequal to each other. This commonality seems to diminish the distinction that Arendt is trying to establish, and makes authority and authoritarianism virtually identical to each other. Authority and authoritarianism share the same foundation. For example, racism is both a set of seemingly immutable truths passed down by experts that derive from historical tradition and presumed biological fact (see Appiah &Gutmann, 1996) and a hierarchical relationship established between people of different races where both parties might accept the legitimacy of the hierarchy. The example of racism generates a view of authority and authoritarianism as two sides of the same coin. Perhaps exploring the commonality between authority and authoritarianism is more fruitful. By Arendt's account of authority and authoritarianism, both constitute a metaphysics of presence, a desire for something fixed, permanent, and real over and above the human contingencies of history. Though I disagree with Taylor's criticism of Derrida for not positing a vision of the good, his description of the effects of dismantling the metaphysics of presence is a good one. [Nietzsche and Derrida] want to disclaim any notion of the good. What they end up celebrating instead, not entirely by design, is the freedom and power of the self. The Derridian insight into the illusions of the

philosophies of presence opens the way to endless free play, unconstrained by a sense of allegiance to anything beyond this freedom. Derridian deconstruction claims to undo certain hierarchical distinctions, such as that between abstraction and concrete experience, misreadings as against true readings, confusion versus clarity, and the like. The general method is to show that the traditionally privileged term depends on, or is a special case of, the lower one. (Taylor, 1989, p. 488) If the purpose of deconstruction is to undermine a metaphysics of presence that posits truths and foundations that are ultimately untenable and fictional and to undo false hierarchies, then it is not just about free play, but also about notions of justice and truth, albeit provisional ones. If the notion of authority is allegedly fixed, then what is valuable about the notion of authority? One might say that authority saves us from the continued and ongoing uncertainty of the lack of epistemological and political foundations. Authority gives us something to go on. However, do we really want to be saved from uncertainty by a notion of authority that rests on a foundation that we naturalize and take to be true independent of our consent and one that is insulated from our critique? Perhaps authority perpetuates the condition of uncertainty that it claims to prevent. Giorgio Agamben (2005) points out how our Roman notions of authority actually set out to create the sorts of contingencies from which we would like authority and law to save us. The notion of the fixed authority of law contains the possibility of the suspension of that law itself, in the figure of the state of exception, where law is suspended due to some state of emergency, creating "essentially an empty space, in which a human action with no relation to law stands before a norm with no relation to life" (p. 86). The authority that upholds law is not a firm foundation because it can suspend law itself, the very foundation of the authority in the first place. If authority can undermine its own foundation, then how much certainty can it generate? This creates a problem for public administration. Public administrators in various capacities are endowed with authority to carry out specific functions to do the peoples' business. However, once endowed with that authority, public administrators can lose sight of what the people want and are in positions where they can do damage. This capacity is precisely because of the authority, which puts administrators into hierarchical instead of cooperative roles with respect to the citizens they serve. Further, they enter into institutions that can become singleminded and rule-bound in their focus, and insulated both from the rule of law and from continuing critique and oversight. Public administrators are caught in a double bind. They must continue to connect the work of their institutions to the popular will, as well as resist their own desires for order, efficiency, and ease that amount to an abuse of legitimate authority, if such a thing as legitimate authority exists. Authority collapses too easily into authoritarianism, and naturally so, since both rely on the existence of a hierarchy that is continually reified. Based on this examination, I argue that there is no qualitative difference between authority and authoritarianism; they are only degrees of severity in the injustice of the hierarchical relationship. From here forward in this paper, I will refer to authority/authoritarianism as one phenomenon. TWO ORWELLIAN MODELS If authoritarianism rests on the existence of a hierarchy that defines the relationship between citizen and government in the absence of force and argument, we can trace two potential sources for the hierarchy. Authoritarianism is either a matter of personality or a matter of institutional structure. In other words, the hierarchy necessary for authority/authoritarianism to exist either is created by a dominant class of humans or is inherent in structures that we enter into. These two possibilities are illustrated in two of George Orwell's novels about authoritarianism, Animal Farm (1946) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). Either authoritarianism is established through the existence of types of people who are prone to seize the dominant role and people who are prone to be content with the subordinate role, or human beings become subject to authoritarian structures that constitute the hierarchy. In the second case, there are no types or natural kinds, but situations that set the stage for the hierarchical relationship. In Orwell's Animal Farm (1946), we see a hierarchy established through the animal rebellion at Manor Farm. The pigs are the natural leaders, plot the rebellion, control the goods produced on the farm, and are eventually

corrupted by their position of power. The pigs seize power by virtue of their being a natural kind. "The work of teaching and organizing the others fell naturally upon the pigs, who were generally considered the cleverest of the animals" (p. 13). This allows the pigs to control both laws and rhetoric governing the operation of the farm by the animals themselves. "The pigs did not actually work, but directed and supervised the others. With their superior knowledge it was natural that they should assume the leadership" (p. 23). The other animals assumed roles for which they were particularly suited. The horses did the heavy physical labor; the sheep, hens, and ducks became the loyal followers; and the dogs became the police force. This would constitute an authoritarian relationship by Arendt's definition; all parties seem to accept the naturalness and appropriateness of the hierarchy. The source or cause of the authoritarian relationship is the personality of the actors. The source of the authoritarian relationship is different in Orwell's account in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the citizens of Oceania have entered into a super-structure that has developed slowly over time. The citizens of Oceania are complicit in the system, like Winston, who works as a censor. However, Winston is able to think outside of the hierarchical structure. For example, he questions the value of his job, falls in love, and commits thought crimes against the Party. Even as Winston despairs at the impossibility of his resistance, he does not accept the nature of the hierarchy he finds himself in. He felt as though he were wandering in the forests of the sea bottom, lost in a monstrous world where he himself was the monster. He was alone. The past was dead, the future was unimaginable. What certainty had he that any single human creature now living was on his side? (p. 27) In committing the thought crime, he realized that he was effectively unintelligible. "Now that he had recognized himself as a dead man it became important to stay alive as long as possible" (p. 29). However, we learn at the end of the book that Winston does not die. Winston is not a type, but an every-man who eventually has his will obliterated by the Party. The causal sources of the authoritarian relationship are the institutions and discourse that lie beyond the control of the actor in the hierarchy. In the following sections, I will explore two theoretical accounts that explore each of these models in turn. The Authoritarian Personality (Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, &Sanford, 1950) claims to find a personality structure that is susceptible to authoritarian environments, which seems to support the Animal Farm model. Michel Foucault explores the nature of institutions that creates the nature of the subjects that take part in them. Being subject to authority/authoritarianism is a question of situation, not personality. Foucault's work seems to support the Nineteen Eighty-Four model. Which model is more accurate, and what are the implications for public administrators and public administration practice? AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITIES? The Authoritarian Personality (Adorno et al., 1950) is a long and complex study that mixes quantitative and qualitative empirical study and psychoanalytical interpretation in an attempt to identify a protofascist personality type that is especially susceptible to authoritarian movements. The study identifies the roots of authoritarianism in the rigid upbringing of children, which re-channels socially inappropriate sexual and aggressive drives into submission to authority and aggression towards outsiders. The authoritarian personality was measured using three attitudinal scales for Anti-Semitism, Ethnocentrism, Political and Economic Conservatism, as well as the F Scale for personality, designed to measure the individual's potential for fascism. These scales ostensibly detected the nine components of authoritarianism: Conventionalism, Authoritarian submission, Authoritarian aggression, Anti-intraception, Superstition and stereotypy, Power and toughness, Destructiveness and cynicism, Projectivity, and (an exaggerated concern with) Sex (Adorno et al. 1950, ñ. 228). According to the study, a high degree of these components of personality, combined with antiSemitic, ethnocentric, and conservative attitudes defines and constitutes the authoritarian personality, and indicates a potential acceptance of democratic collapse and support for fascist political movements. This study that Adorno called "the most fruitful thing that I became acquainted with in America" (in Gross, 1979, p. 343), was not particularly well received by the left or the right, but was eventually heavily scrutinized. The

reasons for its lukewarm reception are many. First of all, psychoanalysis was looked down upon by social scientists in the U.S. as an unscientific European philosophy. secondly, because The Authoritarian Personality identified authoritarian thinking as a primarily rightwing phenomenon, the advent of the Cold War made this conclusion less palatable to a liberal U.S. audience (Shils, 1954). Others, notably J. J. Ray and Francis Fukuyama, have complimented this view by stating that fascism as a historical development is over, so the research stemming from the use of the F Scale is obsolete (Roiser &Willig, 2002, pp. 88-89). Lastly, the methodological problems with the study are well documented in many sources (Hyman &Sheatsley, 1954; Samuelson, 1992). The link between attitude or opinion and personality is tenuous at best. It is difficult, if not impossible, to empirically verify the existence of personality structures and drives, much less find their origin (McKinney, 1973). However, some researchers have found that the F Scale is a reliable instrument, and that subsequent use of the F Scale has borne out its effectiveness as a measure of the tendency toward authoritarian personality traits (Meloen, 1992). Other scales, such as Altemeyer's Right-Wing Authority Scale, have refined the search for the authoritarian personality, refocusing the concentration on attitude rather than personality (Reiser &Willig, 2002, pp. 85-86). Roiser and Willig (2002, pp. 92-93) argue that one of the limitations of The Authoritarian Personality study was the excessive emphasis on personality. The writers of The Authoritarian Personality define personality as "a more or less enduring organization of forces with the individual," that which "lies behind behavior and within the individual," and as "a determinant of ideological preferences" (Adorno et al., 1950, p. 5). Personality, then, is a structure of traits, characteristics, and tendencies that are established early on in one's experience that is very difficult to alter. The study finds that though personality is established in and influenced by the social environment, it is not as susceptible to new environmental factors, like education, as we might like to think. Although personality is a product of the social environment of the past, it is not, once it has developed, a mere object of the contemporary environment. What has developed is a structure within the individual, something which is capable of self-initiated action upon the social environment and of selection with respect to varied impinging stimuli, something which though always modifiable is frequently very resistant to fundamental change, (p. 6) As Else Frenkel-Brunswik (1954) reflects on the study later, the writers of The Authoritarian Personality were not claiming that psychological factors were the only or primary factors in social movements, but rather that social movements affect the development of psychological structures (p. 228). She claims that social movements influence the very makeup of personal life in ways that are hard to measure and from which it is difficult to generalize. As in Orwell's Animal Farm, perhaps there are predictable types of people who will act in authoritarian ways to secure aggressively their interests over those of others, like the pigs. In spite of its methodological problems and political slant, what we take away from The Authoritarian Personality is the idea that there are people who are more susceptible to authoritarian rhetoric and practices than other people are. Although this type is neither genetic nor a natural kind, the authoritarian personality is formed in childhood and not easily alterable in adulthood. There are potential fascists walking among us, who under the right conditions will exhibit authoritarian aggression or submission, depending on how they are situated socially and politically. Presumably, if we put such sorts of people in positions of authority, their character traits of rigidity, a desire for hierarchy, and ethnocentrism will emerge, and we will get undemocratic results.1 Perhaps, if we want institutions to run democratically, deliberatively, and fairly, then we need to identify anti-authoritarian people, and put them in positions of authority. Maybe the F Scale should be used as an aptitude test for potential public administrators? This line of thought illustrates the problem with identifying a personality type that has a particularly acute susceptibility to authoritarianism or fascism. One of the critiques of The Authoritarian Personality coming from the left is that the study left little room for the antidote for the syndrome. What do we do with the authoritarians? Will any argument or program dissuade them from their anti-Semitism and ethnocentrism? It seems as though

the only option is to make sure that they are contained and unorganized, and to enhance democratic practices and institutions to make sure that their influence is limited. Systematically limiting the ideas and activities of fellow citizens puts anti-authoritarians in the position of the authoritarians. This dilemma seems to undo the notion of a particular personality being responsible for authoritarianism, and points instead to the situation as the creator of authoritarian conditions. The very presence of authority/authoritarianism seems to perpetuate itself in ways that are beyond the control of individual personalities. The notion of the authoritarian personality does not seem to net much in terms of solution, and may blind us to the influence of situations and institutions that can turn anyone into an authoritarian. AUTHORITARIAN INSTITUTIONS? One of the positive developments stemming from The Authoritarian Personality is that it disavowed people of the notion that the potential for fascism was a uniquely German phenomenon; it did not stem from the character of a people, but has the potential to flourish in the U.S. and elsewhere. Further, the social psychological research of Stanley Milgram (1974) illustrated how susceptible practically everyone is to the presence of authority and how compelling the impulse to follow orders is. Further, Philip Zimbardo showed how compelling hierarchical social roles are to just about all of the participants of his famous Stanford prison study. As he reflects later on this study, The Evil Situation had triumphed over the Good People who inhabited it. That was the sad conclusion drawn from this exploration into the darker side of human nature. Another interpretation is that people underestimate the subtle powers that some situations can impose on anyone, through the operation of social norms, rules, roles, uniforms, symbols of power, status, and group dynamics. We also tend to overestimate our personal power of invulnerability to withstand becoming corrupted or transformed by such social forces. That illusion of invulnerability actually works against us in increasing our chances of being vulnerable to deceptive sales tactics, or cult recruiters, or in yielding our opinions to that of the majority, or blindly obeying the directives of unjust authorities. (Zimbardo, 2005, n.p.) Good people, in fact the vast majority of good people, can do very bad things if placed in the right situation involving authority, power, and unequal social roles. So, perhaps the problem of authoritarianism is social and institutional, rather than a matter of personality. How can institutions produce conditions like those of authoritarianism? For an example of how institutions literally create people, I turn to the theory of Michel Foucault. Foucault's history is the history of how we have become subjects. He has done this by looking at dividing practices that constitute the very forms of subjectivity that we inhabit. Authority is one of these dividing practices. The subject is what a human being becomes once is it formed and shaped through social processes. The subject is what we are referring to when we say 7, and it signifies what we really are. But, what we really are is not natural or given, but an accomplishment of certain processes. Even using the phrase human being is loaded, since it is we who give that term meaning, and the meaning changes over time. Sex and race are categories illustrative of how subjects are formed. Granted, we are born with bodies that have certain features and skin colors. It is only by virtue of living in a social world where those things have meaning that makes us a woman or white. Those categories, as some would say, are socially constructed. The meaning of the categories far exceeds the reality of the bodies to which they refer. The categories, in a deep way, constitute who we are. And, we become what we are through these dividing practices within the contexts of institutions. Foucault encourages us to hold the notion of human nature open, and to be open to how authoritative discourses and practices constitute what we come to call human nature. Let us not, therefore, ask why certain people want to dominate, what they seek, what is their overall strategy. Let us ask, instead, how things work at the level of on-going subjugation, at the level of those continuous and uninterrupted processes which subject our bodies, govern our gestures, dictate our behaviors etc. (Foucault, 1976, p. 97)

In other words, Foucault asks us to ask the question of how institutions create authoritarians. Authority is not just juridical or governmental or what Foucault calls sovereign in nature, but diffuse in contemporary society. We have common knowledge or truths that we hold to be true, but the source of the truth is often obscured from us, even though we use the truth to define ourselves. Authority works through cultural discourses and practices that we take on in defining and becoming ourselves. Authority is a dividing practice that draws the line between others and us. In Foucault's view of authority, we become something authored from without, and become prevented from the opportunity to author ourselves. "The modern exercise of power on Foucault's account represents a peculiar 'double bind' that produces individuals (productive power) just precisely in order to block off individuality (repressive power)" (Caputo, 1993, p. 251). Ultimately, there is no truth of ourselves; we are neither good nor bad. In fact, we are not anything prior to subjectification through discourses, disciplines, and institutions that create us as certain types of human beings. Once created, it seems as though we were naturally always that type. In his history of the modern prison, Foucault shows us how this process of subjectification works within the context of the prison. First of all, he shows us that the notion of the prison as the prototypical model for punishment is a relatively recent 19th century notion. The idea of and the desire for the docile body that is tightly controlled and suitable for work comes before the development of the prison. Then, once prisons developed as the best method for creating docile bodies, then prisons seemed inevitable and natural. Institutions organize bodies around ideas. In doing so, institutions create people. "The techniques of correction immediately form part of the institutional framework" (Foucault, 1977, p. 234). The institution becomes more than the legal entity and the physical place, but it becomes the process of transformation of subjectivity itself. These "complete and austere" institutions are totalizing in their desire for control over the individual (p. 235). The function of the prison is not primarily to create the sort of bodies that will be useful outside of the prison, but to enact a hierarchical power relationship that will become familiar to us as we see it reenacted in schools, workplaces, and government agencies. For Foucault, the prison is not designed to rid the world of criminals, but to create them through their separation from society. The prison creates the self-fulfilling prophesy of the delinquent, who was always predisposed to commit the crime that he/she ended up committing. The prison ends up creating the myth of a personality type, an inherent and unavoidable character. The introduction of the biographical is important in the history of penalty. Because it establishes the 'criminal' as existing before the crime and even outside it. And, for this reason, a psychological causality, duplicating the juridical attribution of responsibility, confuses it effects, p. 252 The prison produces the person as well as the knowledge about this sort of person simultaneously. This new type of criminal delinquent serves as justification for new laws, punishments, and prisons. The type becomes what we are defending society from, not just his or her criminal actions. This is for Foucault a fabrication that becomes real. The positing of delinquents as dangerous types that require study, new penal codes, and new other social processes to prevent delinquency, creates the delinquents. Through the example of the prison, we can see that we are all subjectified through institutions of various sorts. As in Nineteen Eighty-Four, we become overwhelmed by the institution, learn that resistance is futile, and then wonder why we ever resisted in the first place. The prison is an extreme example, but the fact that we become our roles under conditions of authority and hierarchy is always the case. Under conditions of authority, we become our roles in the hierarchy in a complete and compelling way that we cannot escape, regardless of what we were before entering into the hierarchical setting. However, we may explain and interpret our behavior, either favorable or unfavorable, by way of personality after the fact in a way that reinforces authority as the existence of natural hierarchies. ARTFULLY DODGING THE INSTITUTION (AND YOURSELF): A CASE FOR SELF-AWARE PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

The collapsing of the notions of authority and authoritarianism has some real implications for public administration. If public administrators do not have authority by virtue of their positions, then how can they act? Where will legitimacy come from? Do they have authority by virtue of their expertise? If law, legislators, and higher officials do not have authority, who will issue instructions for administrators to follow? A world without authority seems impossible and frightening. However, I argue that these questions are answerable, but require a re-conception of the roles of administrators in order to get satisfactory answers. In conceiving of public administrators as the holders of positions or as elite experts, we are creating a hierarchy that is characteristic of both authority and authoritarianism. If the hierarchy is impervious to change or argument, it cannot possibly be legitimate. So, why insist on the hierarchy as all? A more democratic conception of who public administrators are and what they do would free us from the dependence on authority as a justification for action. What does this exploration of the two sources of authority/authoritarianism imply for public administrators? Maybe not much, though I suspect that the institutional model of authoritarianism is the better model, based on the social psychological research and a philosophical resistance to natural hierarchies and unchangeable human natures. I am not sure that it matters whether or not anyone can identify the source of authoritarianism as long as a plan is in place to resist it. The first task in resistance is dodging one's own tendency to be authoritarian; this is a matter of personality and character. To this end, I turn to Foucault's advice not to follow our inner fascist. In his preface to Deleuze and Guatarri's Anti-Oedipus, Foucault writes, The major enemy, the strategic adversary is fascism. . . . And not only historical fascism, the fascism of Hitler and Mussolini-which was able to mobilize and use the desire of the masses so effectively-but also the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us. (Foucault, 1983, p. xiii) This resistance takes a bit of honesty and self-exploration into personal motives and desires. Directing others' thoughts, language, and behaviors too closely is potentially dangerous; one does not really know the good for others. Institutions are also worthy of attention. Looking out for institutional injustices that may come to our attention is important, but so is attempting to understand how everyone is affected and constituted in and through these institutions. Know that good individuals are taken in to being a part of the machine; you are not immune. Resisting one's inner fascist is not as easy as it sounds. One prerequisite for doing this is cultivating an awareness of oneself as an imperfect moral agent, realizing that everyone is susceptible to falling into ideologies that are authoritarian. In Responsibility as Paradox (1995), Michael Harmon writes about the notion of reification. Reification is the taking of contingent human categories and principles as absolutely true and not requiring any further reflection on them. According to Harmon, reification encourages us to disavow ourselves as being "moral agents" (p. 113). Reification is not something that anyone can simply think through or talk one's way out of, since it entails an unconscious process. The antidote for reification is self-reflexivity, which entails an ongoing examination of one's relationship to oneself and to the truths one creates and with which one allies oneself. "To be personally responsible is to face, however unpleasant the prospect, the facts of our personal authorship so as to avoid self-deception and self-justification" (p. 85). However, self-awareness is not sufficient to avoid authoritarianism. Even self-reflexive public administrators are subject to how others perceive and posit them. Public administrators take on roles authored by others, and this structures how they will be received by clients and colleagues. These institutional roles are compelling, structural, and difficult to resist. Catlaw (2006) sees the Practitioner as one such role that over-determines public administration practice. In the search for certainty, universality, and neutrality, the practitioner has emerged as a role that public administrators are asked to fulfill. However, the practitioner is a false representation. Though it creates something to aspire to, this role can never capture the individual person practicing public administration. "I will take it as axiomatic that representation necessarily entails exclusion or exception" (p. 197). What is being excluded in the false representation of the practitioner? The practitioner role

both excludes the real self or individual while positing a clear, whole, and unified actor, who acts expertly without doubt and within regulations. As an ideal, the practitioner creates a unified and rational self that does not really exist, but creates an unrealistic expectation. To avoid this doubling of the self, Farmer (2005) posits a notion of the decentered self that is whole but not whole, the whole "person-in-herself in-herdifference" (p. 43). This conception of the self may be contradictory, a whole that is not a whole. However, this conception does not reduce the person to a transparent rational unit that knows itself completely and has clear plans of action. The person-in-herself in-her-difference is both a moral actor and a real person, unique in her perspective and plans for action. This person may be more muddled and confused than a rational unit, but Farmer creates a more realistic picture of the human experience of simultaneously having a past and an identity, playing a role in an institution, and trying to act as a moral agent. This more complex notion of subjectivity illuminates the failure of traditional administrative ethics. Traditional administrative ethics focuses on the generic and autonomous individual beholden to legitimate authority, such that obedience is precisely what characterizes ethical behavior. Adams and Balfour call this the "moral vacuity of administrative ethics" (1998, pp. 166). The historical record is such that we must conclude that the power of the individual's conscience is very weak relative to that of legitimated authority in modern organizations and social structures more generally, and that current ethical standards do little or nothing to limit the potential for evil in modern organizations, (p. 168) The historical record illustrates their point that one cannot simultaneously be a good bureaucrat and a good person within morally inverted systems (pp. 166-170). Their solution is the strengthening of public life and institutions so that citizens can reduce their reliance on authority. Abuses of authority are not necessarily less likely to happen in this case, but are more likely to be detected (p. 180). If we take unorthodox, post-traditional public administration theory as our guide to reflexive practice seriously, then our past notion of authority, legitimate or otherwise, becomes much less compelling. Discourse theory (Fox &Miller, 1995) commands us to synthesize truth with others. Anti-administration (Farmer, 2005) goes beyond reform to open possibilities that are as-yet unthought in our current frameworks of understanding institutions and individuals. Our acceptance of the necessity of authority as a concept forecloses our developing new truths with others, and keeps us locked in hierarchical relationships. In reflecting on a trip to Auschwitz, O. C. McSwite (2002, p. 55) writes, Over and over, [the guide] associated, in her discussion, the ideas of bureaucracy, systematization, and efficiency with evil.... Maybe this is why I like process psychologies, like Lacan's, which depict people as not having identities ("a poem being written") namely because they help me avoid facing that, at the bottom of my character, in my true identity, I am a bureaucrat. It was my cousins, if not brothers, who ran Auschwitz so effectively, just following orders and doing what they were told to do efficiently. The stories of the good bureaucrat doing wrong by just following orders are all too common, and they all rely on the good bureaucrat accepting and acting on a traditional model of authority. Authority is, as Arendt claims, impervious to argument and demanding of obedience. Generally, blind obedience to absolutes and higher ups leads to just what people often accuse bureaucrats of, being cogs in the wheels of unjust practices. CONCLUSION: REAL AUTHORITY? To conclude this discussion of the two models of the sources of authority and authoritarianism and their implications for public administrators and public administration practice, I would like to emphasize that authority as a concept is no longer desirable unless we can develop a notion of authority that is contingent and not absolute. Only under this condition can authority also be democratic. Ultimately, authority is an epistemological problem. Are there really such authorities, people deserving of positions of power and people to whom we grant an unquestionably expert voice? I think that we would have to say no on the basis that we acknowledge different truths and different kinds of knowledge. Theory in the West has shifted its focus away from transparent and unitary models of truth to democratic and multiple models of truth. Our notions of authority should reflect

this shift. Two contemporary epistemologies that reflect this shift are pragmatism and postmodernism. Such epistemologies are anti-authoritarian. In pragmatism, there is no conception of truth beyond collectively and democratically generated human-made truths. Rorty (2006) argues that Dewey's brand of pragmatism is inherently anti-authoritarian because it denies a final deistic authority either in the form of God or an absolute truth. Rorty claims that this resonates with Freud's notion of patricide fueling democracy. Truth becomes what we make together instead of coming from an authority whose source is metaphysical. Only in a democratic society which describes itself in pragmatist terms, one can imagine Dewey saying, is the refusal to countenance any authority save that of consensus reached by free enquiry be complete. Only then can the fraternity which was first glimpsed when the primal father was killed by the band of brothers be achieved. (p. 265) Authority by this pragmatist conception is collective rather than hierarchical, and therefore loses its character as a source beyond the control of those who do not possess it. Postmodernism likewise claims that truth claims are contestable. Postmodern theories expose the metaphysical systems that claim to ensure humans access to the truth (such as Plato's Forms, God, transcendental reason) as no longer reliable, if they ever were. Postmodern thought questions the capacity of humans to perceive the world in an authoritative way and to capture that world in language. Language mediates our experience and our truth claims in such a profound way that we cannot say that we are providing an authoritative truth, but rather an interpretation of reality. Under postmodern conditions, everyone might be an authority on his or her own experience, but no one is an absolute authority on the nature of the real. In both pragmatism and postmodernism, truth is revisable and potentially democratic. In democracy, nothing is self-evident, however, certain ideologies and institutions that shape our conceptual landscape would have us believe otherwise. This tendency for the truths that we generate ourselves to solidify into objects beyond our creation and control is the tendency in ourselves of which we need to become aware. Ultimately, in order for democratically agreed upon truth to flourish, we need to abandon our traditional notions of authority. For to live in a political realm with neither authority nor the concomitant awareness that the source of authority transcends power and those who are in power, means to be confronted anew, without the religious trust in a sacred beginning and without the protection of traditional and therefore self-evident standards of behavior, by the elementary problems of human living-together. (Arendt, 1968, p. 141) Footnote ENDNOTE 1. Within the context of this paper, I advocate for democratic practices, broadly construed, as the opposite of authoritarianism. Democracy, in the sense that I am using the term, should not be confused with majority rule, but rather indicates processes by which human beings construct and reach agreement about shared notions of the truth. Authority/authoritarianism by contrast is characterized by an enforced truth being imposed on individuals and groups from without. References REFERENCES Adams, G. B., &Balfour, D. L. (1998). Unmasking administrative evil. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D. J., &Sanford, R. N. (1950). The authoritarian personality. New York: Harper &Brothers. Agamben, G. (2005). State of exception (K. Attell, Trans.) Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Appiah, K. A., &Gutmann, A. (1996). Color conscious: The political morality of race. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Arendt, H. (1968). Authority. In H. Arendt (Ed.), Between past and future: Eight exercises in political thought (pp. 91-141). New York: The Viking Press.

Caputo, J. (1993). On not knowing who we are: Madness, hermeneutics, and the night of truth in Foucault. In J. Caputo &M. Yount (Eds.), Foucault and the critique of institutions (pp. 233-262). University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Catlaw, T. J. (2006). The death of the practitioner. Administrative Theory &Praxis, 28, 190-207. Farmer, D. J. (2005). To kill the king: Post-traditional governance and bureaucracy. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Foucault, M. (1983). Preface. In G. Deleuze &F. Guattari, Anti-oedipus: Capitalism and schizophrenia (R. Hurley, M. Seem, &H.R. Lane, Trans.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison (A. Sheridan, Trans.). New York: Vintage. Foucault, M. (1976). Two lectures. In C. Gordon (Ed.), Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings 1972-1977 (pp. 78-108). New York: Pantheon. Fox, C. J., &Miller, H. T. (1995). Postmodern public administration: Toward discourse. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Frenkel-Brunswik, E. (1954). Further explorations by a contributor to The authoritarian personality. In R. Christie &M. Jahoda (Eds.), Studies in the scope and method of The authoritarian personality (pp. 50-122). Glencoe, IL: The Free Press. Gross, H. (1979). Adorno in Los Angeles: The intellectual emigration. Humanities in Society, 2, 339-351. Harmon, M. M. (1995). Responsibility as paradox: A critique of rational discourse in government. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Hyman, H., &Sheatsley, P. B. (1954). The authoritarian personality-A methodological critique. In R. Christie &M. Jahoda (Eds.), Studies in the scope and method of The authoritarian personality (pp. 50-122). Glencoe, IL: The Free Press. McKinney, D. W., Jr. (1973). The authoritarian personality studies: An inquiry into the failure of social science research to produce demonstrable knowledge. The Hague: Mouton. McSwite, O. C. (2002). An invitation to public administration. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Meloen, J. D. (1992). The F Scale as a predictor of fascism: An overview of 40 years of authoritarianism research. In W. F. Stone, G. Lerner, &R. Christie (Eds.), Strengths and weaknesses: The authoritarian personality today (pp. 47-69). New York: Springer-Verlag. Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to authority: An experimental view. New York: Harper &Row. Orwell, G. (1949). Nineteen Eighty-Four. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company. Orwell, G. (1946). Animal Farm. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company. Roiser, M., &Willig, C. (2002). The strange death of the authoritarian personality: 50 years of psychological and political debate. History of the Human Sciences, 15(4), 71-96. Rorty, R. (2006). Pragmatism as anti-authoritarianism. In J. R. Shook &J. Margolis (Eds.), A companion to pragmatism (pp. 257-266). Maiden, MA: Blackwell. Samuelson, F. (1992). The authoritarian character from Berlin to Berkeley and beyond: The odyssey of a problem. In W. F. Stone, G. Lerner, &R. Christie (Eds.), Strengths and weaknesses: The authoritarian personality today (pp. 22-43). New York: Springer-Verlag. Shils, E. A. (1954). Authoritarianism: "Right" and "left." In R. Christie &M. Jahoda (Eds.), Studies in the scope and method of The authoritarian personality (pp. 24-49). Glencoe, IL: The Free Press. Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the self: The making of the modern identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Zimbardo, P. (2005). Acceptance speech for the 2005 Dagmar and Vaclav Havel Foundation Award. Retrieved October 14, 2006, from http://www.prisonexp.org/pdf/havelprize.pdf AuthorAffiliation Jennifer L. Eagan California State University, East Bay

AuthorAffiliation Jennifer L. Eagan is an associate professor of Philosophy and Public Affairs &Administration at California State University, East Bay. She is recently the author of "Who Are We Dealing With? Re-visioning Citizen Subjects from a Feminist Perspective," Administrative Theory &Praxis, 28(3). Her research interests include the philosophy of public administration, feminism, postmodernism, and democratic politics. Subject: Studies; Authority; Authoritarianism; Public administration; Classification: 9130: Experiment/theoretical treatment; 1210: Politics & political behavior; 9550: Public sector Publication title: Administrative Theory & Praxis Volume: 29 Issue: 1 Pages: 83-101 Number of pages: 19 Publication year: 2007 Publication date: Mar 2007 Year: 2007 Publisher: M. E. Sharpe Inc. Place of publication: Omaha Country of publication: United States Publication subject: Public Administration ISSN: 10841806 Source type: Scholarly Journals Language of publication: English Document type: Feature Document feature: References ProQuest document ID: 196608468 Document URL: http://search.proquest.com.library.capella.edu/docview/196608468?accountid=27965 Copyright: Copyright University of Nebraska at Omaha, School of Public Administration Mar 2007 Last updated: 2011-07-23 Database: ABI/INFORM Global

Bibliography Citation style: APA 6th - American Psychological Association, 6th Edition

Jennifer, L. E. (2007). IS AUTHORITY IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION SEPARABLE FROM AUTHORITARIANISM? PERSONALITIES, INSTITUTIONS, AND RESISTANCE. Administrative Theory & Praxis, 29(1), 83-101. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.library.capella.edu/docview/196608468?accountid=27965

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