Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2023, 59(4): 417-439 | DOI: 10.13060/csr.2022.035

The Selection of the Chair of the Whistleblowers Protection Office in Slovakia as the Creation of State-Institutionalised Ethical-Political Agency

Petr Mezihorák ORCID...
Sociologický ústav Slovenskej akadémie vied, v. v. i., Bratislava

This article analyses the public hearing of candidates for the position of Chair of the Whistleblowers Protection Office in Slovakia in order to examine the hitherto overlooked issue of ethical-political agency that seeks to create an institution for the common good. Ethical political agency is the type of agency that transcends both the conception of institutions as dominant, taken-for-granted structures whose rules individuals tacitly follow, whereby they are deprived of agency, and the understanding of agency as a strategic activity that uses institutions to promote the specific interests of individuals. An analysis of the interactions between the candidates and the committee members, based on publicly available audiovisual recordings, shows that the candidates differed in their perceptions of their agency and its limits, but it was the public and dialogical arrangement of the hearings that shaped the conditions for the emergence of the specific image of ethical-political agency. This study thus grasps the public hearing as a form of institutional work that disrupts the notion that the relationship between the individual and the structure is invariable. The study contributes to the theoretical debate on institutional work by highlighting the interactive dimension involved in the shaping of the conditions for the emergence of ethical-political agency.

Keywords: bureaucracy, ethical-political agency, institutional work, interactionism, responsibility, whistleblowing

Received: December 6, 2021; Revised: November 2, 2022; Accepted: November 3, 2022; Prepublished online: November 11, 2022; Published: September 18, 2023  Show citation

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Mezihorák, P. (2023). The Selection of the Chair of the Whistleblowers Protection Office in Slovakia as the Creation of State-Institutionalised Ethical-Political Agency. Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review, 59(4), 417-439. doi: 10.13060/csr.2022.035
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