陳建強的動向研究所

Interpreting The World of Political Elites. By David Richards and Martin J. Smith Poblic Administration, Vol.82, No.4, 2004,777-800.

Generally, these two contrasting narratives do not lead to conflict between ministers and civil servants, since the source of their narratives is the same—the Westminster model. However, a serious breakdown in the relationship between ministers and civil servants can occur when either one or both sets of actors: (a) ascribe to a tradition other than the Westminster model; or (b) when they appeal to different narratives within the Westminster model which shapes their subsequent behaviour and actions. The theoretical tool we us to develop this argument is the ‘interpretative approach’, associated with the recent works of …p.778

Materialist explanations are also apparent in certain institutionalist accounts that see the nature of the British state deriving from the context of nineteenth-century state forms that were developed at the time of a minimalist state and an expansive empire.p.780

Collectively, these authors have labelled this ‘the interpretative approach’ which involves: ‘moving back and forth between aggregate concepts and the beliefs of particular individuals’. They suggest that actions are related to interpretations of beliefs that develop in relation to sets of traditions and dilemmas.p.780

For Foucault: there is no power relation without the correlative constitutions of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations…the subject who knows, the objects to be known and the modalities of knowledge must be regarded as so many effects of these fundamental implications of power knowledge.p.782 Foucault. M. 1977. Discipline and Punish: Birth of the Prison. New York: Random House p.27-28

…what seems the normal moral order is in fact a social construction and the assumptions of this normal ordr contain important implications for the nature of power.p.784