Chapter 4 - Conceptual foundations of societal constitutionalism: from internal restraints on government to external restraints on drift

Summary

It is only possible to escape the reductionist tacks noted at the end of the last chapter if a standard of “professional integrity” can be specified that is normative and yet also exhibits both of the following qualities. First, this normative standard must be capable of being recognized and understood in common by heterogeneous actors and competing groups even under modern conditions of drift. Second, this same normative standard must also qualify as at least possibly reasoned in some sense broader than the admittedly narrow standard of rational or instrumental action. If it turns out that there are no normative standards of professional integrity available that exhibit both of these qualities, then whenever professionals endeavor to maintain their purported “integrity” at the expense of other actors' subjective interests this is reducible to a power play on their part. As contributors to the “social closure” or “monopoly” approach to professions insist (from Larson 1977 and Collins 1979 to Murphy 1988 and even Abbott 1988), professionals are simply influencing power holders to impose on other actors the costs of whatever special advantages or “protected status” they are being accorded.

Four analytical distinctions fill the lacuna of integrative possibilities and open the way to responding directly to the Weberian Dilemma, including demonstrating that there is indeed a normative standard of “professional integrity” that exhibits both of the qualities just noted. The purpose of this chapter is to introduce these analytical distinctions, and in this way to propose a terminology with which to respond to the Weberian Dilemma directly.