Ricardo Blaug

The Tyranny of the Visible: Problems in the Evaluation of Anti-Institutional Radicalism

This paper inspects our understanding of recent organizational innovations taking place at the margins of radical theory and practice. Its central argument is that political science, in its reaction to such innovations, evinces a hierarchical organizational paradigm that both distorts evidence and hampers further research. The paper then explores the nature of this perceptual failure, tries a variety of conceptual resources which might overcome it and concludes with a re-assessment of the organizational innovations themselves.

New Developments in Deliberative Democracy

This paper inspects recent theoretical work in deliberative democracy. It identifies three distinct ways in which such theories attempt to justify their claims for an increase in deliberation. Each has its strengths; each has its implications for practice. If the new deliberative theories are to move beyond a critique of liberal democracy in order to articulate a legitimate and practical politics, the respective gains of these three types must be brought together.

Why is there hierarchy? Democracy and the question of organisational form

Elitist and technocratic accounts of democracy assume the necessity of leadership and hierarchy, while participatory approaches claim that organisations can be more ‘horizontal’ yet remain effective. To inform this debate, this paper presents a critical examination of the hierarchic organisational form. It explores classic economic and political accounts of how hierarchy emerges and is maintained, and seeks to reveal the mechanisms by which it achieves organisational effectiveness. The paper argues that significant ideological distortion lies at the heart of elitist accounts of democracy and sometimes in our popular conceptions as well. This distortion takes the form of a false equation between organisational effectiveness and hierarchy, one that allows hierarchy to appear necessary, when it is no such thing. With social science unable to confirm the popular belief that hierarchy is inevitable, the paper concludes that those who seek to build more participatory organisations are correct to question its unreflective use. The paper is thus intended as a contribution to the activities of democratic citizens in their vigilant management of this most prevalent, yet mysterious, of organisational forms.

Pathologies of Power and Cognition

Leadership and hierarchy are effective ways of coordinating human activity, but they also tempt us into making chronic mistakes. Students of history have long been concerned by the psychological effects of gaining power over others and can point to numerous examples where seemingly reasonable individuals have become pathologically destructive and cruel upon the assumption of social roles of high status. Similarly, myth and fable caution against the pathologies of power, while standard accounts of notorious emperors (Nero, Caligula), infamous warlords (Genghis Khan, Coriolanus) and psychotic dictators (Hitler, Stalin) have long served to highlight the dangers of tyrannical, hubristic or corrupted thinking. Well-worn popular quotes inform us that power ‘goes to the head’ and ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely.’2 More recently, researchers in organisational and management studies, psychoanalysis,3 social psychology,4 linguistic5 and neural science6 have sought to provide additional tools by means of which to identify, explain and manage this troubling tendency. Of particular interest are current attempts to determine clinical indicators for hubris as a psychopathology.7 Given our apparent inability to adequately manage power in our society, a better account of the scope of these pathologies and the mechanisms by which they occur would be of considerable value.

55. Vindication of the Rights of Woman

ed and exalted by grief, dwells on the fond hope that the eyes which her trembling hand closed, may still see how she subdues every wayward passion to fulfil the double duty of being the father as well as the mother of her children. Raised to heroism by misfortunes, she represses the first faint dawning of a natural inclination, before it ripens into love, and in the bloom of life forgets her sexforgets the pleasure of an awakening passion, which might again have been inspired and returned. She no longer thinks of pleasing, and conscious dignity prevents her from priding herself on account of the praise which her conduct demands. Her children have her love, and her brightest hopes are beyond the grave, where her imagination often strays. I think I see her surrounded by her children, reaping the reward of her care. The intelligent eye meets hers, whilst health and innocence smile on their chubby cheeks, and as they grow up the cares of life are lessened by their grateful attention. She lives to see the virtues which she endeavoured to plant on principles, fixed into habits, to see her children attain a strength of character sufficient to enable them to endure adversity without forgetting their mother’s example. The task of life thus fulfilled, she calmly waits for the sleep of death, and rising from the grave, may sayBehold, thou gavest me a talentand here are five talents. I wish to sum up what I have said in a few words, for I here throw down my gauntlet, and deny the existence of sexual virtues, not excepting modesty. For man and woman, truth, if I understand the meaning of the word, must be the same; yet the fanciful female character, so prettily drawn by poets and novelists, demanding the sacrifice of truth and sincerity, virtue becomes a relative idea, having no other foundation than utility, and of that utility men pretend arbitrarily to judge, shaping it to their own convenience. Women, I allow, may have different duties to fulfil; but they are human duties, and the principles that should regulate the discharge of them, I sturdily maintain, must be the same. To become respectable, the exercise of their understanding is necessary, there is no other foundation for independence of character; I mean explicitly to say that they must only bow to the authority of reason, instead of being the modest slaves of opinion. In the superior ranks of life how seldom do we meet with a man of superior abilities, or even common acquirements? The reason

Psychologies of Power

Psychology, as the study of the human mind, tends to begin with the individual and to come to matters social and political as something of an afterthought. The mind is structured in this or that way, people are social, in the social world there are collectives and in those collectives, power comes into play. As a result of this ordinal primacy of the individual, psychology has always struggled to provide insights into the intersubjective world. At best, the discipline has sought to plumb the complex interaction of individual and social processes, and we see this in the development of sociology and social psychology. At worst, it unwittingly adopts a methodological individualism that misses the strange and synergetlc effects of groups and simply forgets about power altogether.

Corruption, Power and Democracy

It happened to Caligula, Tiberius, Robespierre, Hitler and Stalin, and perhaps also to Mugabe, Thatcher, Bush and Blair. But there was no question about Richard Keys. In his case, it took a curiously protracted form. Promoted first to middle management and then to managing director, Keys moved slowly from popular and enthusiastic office worker to gruff and impatient boss. Confined to his parochial empire on the edge of an industrial estate near Swindon, Keys evinced all the classic indicators of corruption by power; so much so that at last, his erstwhile friends used a telling everyday phrase to describe him to new recruits: power, they said, had ‘gone to his head’*.

Habermas's treatment for relativism

This paper introduces the critical theory of Jürgen Habermas by presenting it as a response to the problems of relativism. While relativism offers a critique of power abuse, it has the additional effect of undermining the use of reason in political and moral action. Habermas seeks to preserve its strengths, and at the same time to defend a role for reason. Following an exploration of the gains offered by his approach, it is suggested that, though his treatment for relativism is effective, it too has a side-effect.