Roles, role modulations and differential moral assessment of role performance

This paper is a further development of the second section of Social Science Working Paper Number 410. I argue here that disagreements over how well or how ill someone has performed in some social role are affected by a widespread tendency to confuse public and private roles. Those who assess performance in a given role by the standards appropriate for private roles will never agree with those who assess the same performance by the standards appropriate for public roles. I illustrate this thesis by examining differing evaluations of a number of typical policy decisions. While I do not expect that this discussion will terminate all such disagreements, I hope it may help disputants to understand what it is they are disagreeing about.