Dragan Stanisevski

Fear Thy Neighbor

This article expands on Giddenss (1991) analysis of the tribulation of the self in late modernity. It examines national identities as sources of binding authority that provide a sense of ontological security to the modern individual. In analyzing the constitution of the national self the article focuses on two primary understandings: ius soli (birthright citizenship) and ius sanguinis (right of the blood). It argues that both understandings could enable the illusions of national purity, which are inherently exclusionary and could lead to violence against the Other. The article concludes that our capacity to deal with intercultural conflicts depends in part on our openness to imagining different and more plural perceptions of the self.

Liberty, Equality, Solidarity A Theoretical Minuet in Four Steps

The theoretical minuet featured in previous issues of Administrative Theory & Praxis included contemporary theoretical discussions of the three seminal concepts of modern governance: liberty, equality, and solidarity. The authors who contributed to the previous forums—Amna Imam, Sara Jordan, Michael W. Spicer, Brandi Blessett and Tia Sherèe Gaynor, and Jeannine M. Love and Margaret Stout—provided insightful, critical, and sometimes provocative reflections that highlighted the changing nature and the continuing relevance of these ideals. They frequently, however, also pointed out the interactive and frequently contradictory disposition of our aspirations toward liberty, equality, and solidarity. Can liberty, equality, and solidarity coexist in an integrative system of governance, as the French revolutionaries imagined? Are the three colors that make the French flag, and the elements of Krzysztof Kieœlowski’s Three Colors Trilogy (1993–94) that inspired this theoretical minuet, unified in a common whole that synthetizes the particularities of each by producing a different quality? Or rather, are liberty, equality, and solidarity mutually exclusive and therefore plagued with inevitable trade-offs the balance of which rests on the specific determination of each society? The final step in the theoretical minuet aims to address these lingering questions. The last forum in the theoretical minuet features two articles, one by Nancy Bouchard and Étienne Charbonneau, and the other by Michael W. Spicer. Bouchard and Charbonneau bring out an important underlying issue pertaining to the three French revolutionary ideals: they rest on the assumption that there is a unified national public. Solidarity and equality in particular become much easier to administer and agree upon if there is a presumption of national unity, of “fraternity” as the revolutionaries termed it, which assumes that the citizens are part of a common public. Nevertheless, as Bouchard and Charbonneau correctly indicate, most modern societies are plural communities that have

Liberty, Equality, Solidarity A Theoretical Minuet in Four Steps Step Three: Solidarity

We continue our theoretical minuet with the next step, solidarity. Solidarity, or “brotherhood,” is one of the critical values of modern society, as it has been since the dawn of human civilization. When we speak of the need to assist victims of natural disasters, for example, we often couch this need in terms of solidarity with the victims and their families. When European Union leaders speak of the importance of assisting troubled Southern or Eastern Europeans, they often invoke the principle of solidarity. When a nation is attacked, its nationals usually rally ’round the flag in solidarity to defend it. When union members in, say, Poland organize to defend their labor or political rights, they often use the nomenclature of solidarity. So, what is solidarity? The Oxford English Dictionary (1995) defines solidarity as “unity, agreement and support resulting from shared interests, feelings, actions, sympathies, etc.” Solidarity is a feeling of unity or support for others that arises from belonging to a particular community. A community could be a community of human beings, as in our first example; a community of interests and shared cultural identity, as in the case of the European Union or a labor union; or a national community, as in our third example. But what does it mean to be in solidarity with others in contemporary times, and what is the role of public administration in fostering solidarity? The two essays featured in this forum aim to answer some of these questions. Sara R. Jordan embraces the moral dimension of solidarity and focuses on the role of solidarity in administrative ethics. She makes the case for considering solidarity an “ethical commitment” in the distribution of government benefits, particularly when it comes to the fruits of academic and scientific research. She contrasts the foundationalist from the antifoundationalist orientation toward solidarity and distinguishes between “capacious antifoundational solidarity, momentary antifoundational solidarity, [and] limited foundational solidarity.” While she provides a balanced take on these different perspectives,

Introduction to the Forum: Stories in Tribute: The Legacy of Ralph P. Hummel

The bureaucratic “conversion machinery” of which Ralph Hummel (2008, p. xxi) so eloquently spoke is not abating in strength. It continues to subvert the ideals for creating a more humanistic world under the shroud of technicism capable of devolving moral responsibility in the promise of instrumental reasoning. It is maliciously and insidiously subverting the meaning of everyday experience. It is totalizing, although not necessarily totalitarian. It is everywhere, and nowhere in particular. The tentacles of bureaucratic machinery, indeed, touch on virtually every sphere of human existence trapping the individual person in a Weberian iron cage while accepting, even welcoming, a shackling of the mind. Like Virgil to Dante, Ralph Hummel exposes us to the hellacious conditions of an enframed mind (see Dante Aligiheri, trans. 1980). And yet, the possibility for resistance remains, at least for those, to apply differently Hummel’s words, who have “the courage of exercising whatever is left of human freedom” (2008, p. 231). For those craving to resist, and for many others, Hummel’s work continues to be a crucial landmark in thinking of a different world. This forum is a tribute to Ralph Hummel’s legacy and concedes that every experience exceeds what can be said about it. Nonetheless, we have attempted through these selections to feature various authors whose lives were touched by Ralph Hummel as a person and as a scholar. María Verónica Elías directly addresses the core aspect of Hummel’s scholarship, our freedom under threat from the unrelentingly imposing narratives of technical rationality, which ignore or marginalize those “who are amateurs in theory but experts in life,” as she puts it in Hummel’s words. Hummel’s unremitting call for freedom, Elías reminds us, is also a call to action and a ray of hope for the recovery of humanity in our communal interactions, in which we can negotiate everything