IDHEA’s take on dirty hands
Dirty-Hands (DH) refers to the idea that public officeholders can, or at times must, engage in morally questionable actions for the sake of a greater moral and political good, or at any rate as a lesser evil. DH arguments traditionally depict dramatic political decisions, such as using extreme measures like torture to prevent significant harm, like a terrorist attack. However, there is no apparent reason to limit DH to this extraordinary domain of institutional action. The IDHEA research project pioneers the use of DH as a methodological tool to analyze institutional dysfunctions, such as corruption. Discussing the methodology of DH is helpful to examine and evaluate the moral and emotional tensions between compliance with institutional rules and the potential benefits of sidestepping those rules within dysfunctional public institutions.
IDHEA pursues three lines of inquiry, each corresponding to one research objective:
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1. To diagnose institutional dysfunctions: By identifying which (ab)uses of power of office qualify as instances of DH, we can distinguish, e.g., cases of malicious corruption from those of noble cause corruption. |
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2. To explore the emotional landscape of institutional dysfunctions: By studying the mixed emotional reactions accompanying DH (e.g., guilt, shame, pride, regret, remorse), we can understand officeholders’ moral burdens and the fitting emotional responses when officeholders break institutional rules to tackle institutional dysfunctions. |
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3. To analyze how institutional dysfunctions relate to officeholders’ trust dynamics: By analyzing when DH indicates a breach in the mutual trust among officeholders, we can assess the conditions at which compliance with duties of office can sustain institutional action, and those at which the breakdown of compliance signifies the emergence of a form of “dirty trust” among officeholders acting on personal initiatives. |
These discrete but interlocked lines of inquiries will distinguish between the different circumstances of DH, whether they derive from normalized structural dysfunctions, such as systemic corruption, or from dysfunctions emerging out of unexpected challenges, such as emergency responses to health or security crises. By examining these types of institutional dysfunctions through the unified methodological lens of DH, IDHEA will provide innovative tools to enhance the understanding of the architecture of public institutional action and its pitfalls. The promised impact of such an enhanced understanding is both philosophically and practically significant. The philosophical analytical insights will sustain the development of practical tools for interpreting various sources of institutional dysfunctions in a nuanced and reflective manner, countering “one-size-fits-all” and top-down approaches.