Responsibility and the Official: Forms and Ambiguities

Extract

AMBIGUITIES OF MEANING ARISE IN ALMOST ANY DISCUSSION OF comparative politics. In talk about the political responsibility of public officials it seems even harder than usual to be sure that one is not slipping from one meaning of responsibility to another oneself, harder yet to be sure that others are talkin about the same thing. Responsibility is a term used in politics, philosophy and law, and though there may be links between, for example, the debate about free will and individual responsibility and certain legal concepts, the philosophers' and the lawyers' discourse is quite different. The study of politics, for its part, involves many disciplines. Here, among other things, we may find ourselves concerned with the broad ideological and constitutional principles upon which the political system rests, with an institutional examination of the machinery of government, with the laws that regulate administrative practice, with the beliefs and behaviour patterns of administrators, and with broader philosophical questions about the nature of ‘good’ government. Given these different approaches, the word responsibility is bound to be used in a variety of senses and, within each, because our vocabulary is not legislated for us, there are bound to be shades of meaning that vary with the user.