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Book Review: The Jurisprudence of Emergency: Colonialism and the Rule of Law

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
Published date01 March 2006
Date01 March 2006
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1177/096466390601500109
Subject MatterArticles
BOOK REVIEWS
149
demonstrating the ways in which front-line officers produce and sustain cultural
normative orders. This contribution is welcome and important. However, their
emphasis on the importance of the ‘citizen-agent’ narrative and their own particular
contribution to the field, seems to bring with it a few problems which are worth
noting briefly. First, the authors’ characterization of the existing literature as paying
insufficient attention to the moral dimension of decision-making seems a little exag-
gerated. One need only consider the literature on regulatory enforcement, and the
work of Keith Hawkins (2002: 44) in particular, to note the significance ascribed to
moral decision-making in existing accounts of front-line discretion. Second, the core
technique of narrative analysis and the research subjects’ brief to focus on stories
which invoked their personal sense of fairness has perhaps exaggerated the signifi-
cance of the moral dimension to the analysis of decision-making. Stories which are
invited to invoke senses of fairness will tend to stress the moral dimension of decision-
making. Maynard-Moody and Musheno have done a fantastic job of exploring this
dimension and stressing its importance. However, we should not ignore the signifi-
cance of the regulatory environment in which decision-making occurs. In addition to
making moral decisions about citizen-clients, front-line officers also care about
legality and administrative propriety – and not just as a support to prior moral judge-
ments. Legal conscientiousness, or a commitment to legality, is as much a feature of
front-line decision-making as are judgements about citizens’ worth (the argument is
explored further in Halliday (2004)). The authors’ stress on their citizen-agent narra-
tive underplays the explanatory power of the ‘state-agent narrative’. It is surely an
axiom of social science that the answer to ‘either/or’ questions is usually ‘both’. A
fuller account of decision-making will consider both ‘narratives’. Indeed, there will
be other aspects of front-line work which also require attention – for...

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