Administrative Decision Making

• Author: Hendrik Wagenaar
• Published date: 01 November 2015
• DOI: 10.1177/0095399715602734
• Date: 01 November 2015
• Subject Matter: Disputatio Sine Fine

Administration & Society

2015, Vol. 47(9) 1087 –1093

© The Author(s) 2015

DOI: 10.1177/0095399715602734

aas.sagepub.com

Disputatio Sine Fine

Administrative Decision

Making: A Practical

Clarification

Hendrik Wagenaar1

Abstract

We make values explicit when routines break down. I do not deduct a

particular pragmatic way of dealing with such conflicts from a position

of value pluralism, something that seems to have attracted the ire of my

learned colleagues in this debate. Instead, it is the other way around. I used

value pluralism to explain not only how administrators dealt with difficult

choices but also that, in the large majority of cases, they managed to arrive

at decisions that seemed judged to be reasonable. This makes for a very

different project than my colleagues make it out to be.

Keywords

value pluralism, administrative decision making, philosophy

Just as there is nothing else for a point to be but something that counts towards

victory in a contest, there is nothing else for a value to be but something that

guides our deliberations and attitudes in practice.

—(Anderson, 1997, p. 91)

In Talisse’s 6,500-word essay on value pluralism, the reader learns a lot about

the philosophical debate on this vexing issue. In its emphasis on value

monism and on Isaiah Berlin as the epitome of value pluralism, it is rather

partial, but the author delivers what he promises in his title: a philosophical

1University of Sheffield, UK

Corresponding Author:

Hendrik Wagenaar, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, University of Sheffield,

Western Bank, Sheffield, S10 2TN Shefiield, UK.

Email: h.wagenaar@sheffield.ac.uk

602734AASXXX10.1177/0095399715602734Administration & SocietyWagenaar

research-article2015