Administrative evil and moral disengagement: The case of torture in apartheid-era South Africa

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Einolf, Christopher J.
• 署名单位: Northern Illinois University
• 刊物名称: PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0033-3352
• DOI: 10.1111/puar.13875
• 发表日期: 2025
• 页码: 641-651
• 关键词: perpetrators

摘要

Understanding how administrators can commit unethical acts is an important goal of public administration research. This article tests whether moral inversion, taken from Balfour, Adams, and Nickels' theory of administrative evil, can help explain torture, and also proposes and tests Bandura's theory of moral disengagement. It analyzes testimony from perpetrators of torture who testified before the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1996-2000. The results support moral inversion, as perpetrators stated that they believed their actions were morally justified. The results also support displacement of responsibility, as perpetrators shifted responsibility away from themselves and toward actors above or below them in the chain of command. However, the analysis does not support the theory of diffusion of responsibility, as perpetrators did not take the silence of officials outside of their chain of command as approval, but instead anticipated their disapproval and tried to conceal their actions.