The Bond Of Accountability
Daniel Ward explores the virtues of democratically elected leaders.
One of the common objections to representative democracy is that it rarely produces ‘good leaders’. Each leader deemed incompetent seems to be manifest proof of democracy’s inadequacy. It is this frustration that leads some to consider democracy, in Winston Churchill’s words, “the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
Yet the function of representative democracy is not to produce great leaders. The quality of elected officials – presidents, prime ministers, senators – is in fact irrelevant to the purpose of democratic governance. Rather, democracy is merely one of the more recent attempts to preserve stability by forestalling revolution.
Philosopher-kings
Suppose for a moment that Australia abandons its model of representative democracy. Instead, we adopt an enlightened method of selecting Platonic philosopher-kings.
A conference of leading psychologists, political scientists, anthropologists, historians, soldiers, statesmen and business leaders meets to draft a series of tests, to be undertaken by students. Like the psychometric tests sat by hopeful Macquarie Bank applicants, these questionnaires select tomorrow’s despots.
Those displaying a character and aptitude most suited to political office are chosen for special training. Depending on their individual talents, they will be given ‘cabinet portfolios’. The bureaucracy will be subordinate to these new leaders’ decisions. All forms of popular representation will be abolished.
Suppose also that Australia’s philosopher-rulers will always make the ‘right’ decisions. For current purposes, we will leave aside debates about the nature of ‘rightness’. The point is that the rigorous selection process will always produce the ‘best’ leaders, who always make the ‘best’ decisions for Australia.
“Representative democracy shackles the people to their leaders’ actions in a way that other political systems cannot.”
Would this system be better than democracy? Of course, the citizenry would not be represented, but surely it could be content in the knowledge that the decisions of its leaders were ‘optimal’.
Two forms of accountability
It is tempting to object to the above scenario on the basis that Australia’s leaders would not be accountable to the people. It seems inherently unpalatable to invest leaders with power unrestrained by popular will.
By hypothesis, however, our new rulers are trained to make the best decisions on behalf of the people. By virtue of their conditioning, they unfailingly fulfil this obligation. Moreover, they have the advantage of being liberated from the fickle whims of an ignorant electorate. These despots are therefore far better placed to serve the populace than today’s democratically elected leaders.
This apparently nullifies any need for direct accountability to the people. The function of democratic accountability (to ensure that the people’s representatives act in their constituencies’ interests) is now fulfilled by the leaders’ special conditioning. Indeed, the conditioning accomplishes this objective more effectively, as our philosopher-kings may serve citizens’ long-term interests, unhindered by concerns about short-term re-election.
However, there is another, oft-ignored facet to accountability. Representative democracy makes the people accountable for the decisions of their elected leaders. The people are accountable to themselves and to each other. Elections force voters to assume ultimate responsibility for the shortcomings of those whom they elect, a role that is even more vital to democratic systems than leaders’ supposed accountability to voters.
On many accounts, human freedom is bound up with this ability to assume responsibility for decisions autonomously. Isaiah Berlin, in Two Concepts of Liberty, argues that a being enjoys ‘positive freedom’ when he or she bears “responsibility for his choices and [is] able to explain them by reference to his own ideas and purposes. I feel free to the degree that I believe this to be true, and enslaved to the degree that I am made to realise that it is not.”
If one accepts that the ability to take responsibility for one’s decisions is central to freedom itself, then it follows that the second form of accountability largely defines the liberty we enjoy in a representative democracy.
At this point, a Liberal voter might object that he or she bears no responsibility for the Rudd Prime Ministership or its policies. However, this is a short-sighted view. If the Liberal voter in question has ever considered a government legitimate by virtue of popular election, then he or she has tacitly taken responsibility for the actions of any and all governments legally elected under the same system. By accepting Australia’s democratic system as a valid method of expressing the Rousseauian general will, an individual takes responsibility for the outcomes of that system, regardless of whether he or she agrees with them in any individual instance. The alternative is to renounce one’s citizenship or to engage in consistent acts of civil disobedience.
Accountability as pacifier
Representative democracy shackles the people to their leaders’ actions in a way that other political systems cannot. It makes the electorate complicit in the incompetence of its representatives. A revolt against democratically elected politicians would amount to a rebellion against the general will and, more importantly, against oneself.
“Only in cases of a deep rupture in the very system that is deemed to express the general will (such as an elected leader arbitrarily abrogating citizens’ electoral rights) is popular revolt a justifiable course of action.”
In the past, popular revolutions (as opposed to military coups) have occurred in conditions where the people do not feel responsible for their rulers’ policies. State produced violence is not needed to pacify the populace in cases where the latter bears ultimate responsibility for state policy. Only in cases of a deep rupture in the very system that is deemed to express the general will (such as an elected leader arbitrarily abrogating citizens’ electoral rights) is popular revolt a justifiable course of action. In these instances, an individual can no longer be held responsible for the ruler’s actions, and the contract binding those rulers to the general will is broken.
Instability in fledgling or failed democracies arises from the fundamental disconnect between the people and the policies of their elected representatives. Weak state institutions and structures lead ordinary voters to the rightful conclusion that the behaviour of those whom they elect is essentially unpredictable. The people cannot, therefore, be held accountable for the potentially destructive policies pursued by their rulers. Hence, political violence is no longer an assault on the body politic itself but rather a justifiable means of constraining an entity that is entirely divorced from the people.
Most importantly, few voters in fledgling democracies have had the opportunity to take responsibility for the outcomes of their electoral choices; they have had little chance to endorse, implicitly or explicitly, their political system as a valid expression of the general will. Consequently, in a country such as Iraq, even leaders elected with an overwhelming majority will constantly face the prospect of violent opposition as neither their supporters nor their opponents can be held fully accountable for their leaders’ decisions.
In such cases, revolution may be provoked by mere incompetence rather than any abuse of power. While popular revolt is possible in an established democracy where a leader breaks the social contract, it is unlikely in cases where a ruler is simply incompetent. Where, on the other hand, the people cannot be held accountable for acts of ineptitude on the part of their governments, there is no reason to abstain from violent revolt. One cannot resile from a responsibility never fully accepted.
Herein lies the fundamental importance of the people’s accountability as opposed to that of their leaders. Rulers who are perceived as desperately incompetent may be fully accountable to their constituency, but if this constituency feels no accountability for their apparent incompetence, there is little to protect them from violent removal. The rulers need not engage in acts of egregious cruelty for the stability of their reign to be threatened. Had the French felt themselves accountable for the actions of their kings, Louis XVI might have met a more pleasant death.
Implications for philosopher-kings
While the rulers imagined in the first part of this article always, by hypothesis, make the ‘best’ decisions, their subjects are not accountable for these actions. The people’s lack of responsibility does not augur well for our philosopher-kings. Unless the ‘best’ decisions are incorrectly defined as those that upset the fewest people, the philosopher-kings will inevitably earn the opprobrium of large portions of the population. At this point, there will be no sense of collective accountability to thwart the impulse to violent revolt.
Suppose that by some quirk of fate, the ‘best’ choices, as taken by the philosopher-leadership, involve raising fuel prices. A populace that felt responsible for these choices – because they were made by democratically elected leaders – might endure the consequences. One that felt no such accountability would be less likely to acquiesce.
It seems reasonable to conclude that democratically elected representatives are inherently the ‘best’ leaders a nation could have, purely by virtue of the responsibility they force the populace to bear. The justice of a policy will never be so obvious as to forestall popular revolt, unless its justice stems not from the nature of the policy itself but from the fact that those affected may be held accountable for it.
A second implication is that the further a country moves from allowing its citizenry direct responsibility for national policy, the higher is the likelihood of political and social unrest. Hence, even in nominally representative democracies, if citizens cannot be considered to have autonomously chosen their leaders, there is less of a safeguard against popular revolution. This explains the concerns that arise when large segments of a population feel disenfranchised.
Against the backdrop of apocalyptic predictions proffered by all sides of politics today, states are in danger of being seduced by the false allure of a philosopher-king who appears as a saviour, soaring above the electoral whims of a misguided populace. The challenge for democracies remains to preserve the bond of accountability, tying citizens to leaders’ decisions.
