#

PUBLIC OFFICIALS, ACCOUNTABILITY AND THE CONVERSATIONS OF DEMOCRACY

OCTOBER 2006

THE ACCOUNTABLE PUBLIC OFFICIAL

I stumbled across this in on an ancient data disc. It was written for a conference held in Ottawa, Canada 2006. The basic analysis, to, perhaps, my surprise holds up though the optimism with which solutions were indicated misguided.

Explanation:  Accountability in the public legal sense may not be an inherent characteristic of statesmen, parliamentarians and public servants.  Democratic knowledge and sensitivity can be taught and ingrained in law school, in other faculties of social sciences and by professional training.  What is the appropriate solution for encouraging public accountability through the teaching of law, public policy and administration and politics

Introduction

All those engaged in the public sector whether as politicians or public servants are exposed to new demands for accountability. The identification of what is good governance in the public sector takes centre of the stage. The effort is to instruct public officials in its procedures and win commitment to its principles. Officials are open to instruction. The merits of greater transparency and clearer regulation are obvious. The elaboration of ethical codes guides the official out of range of the devastating fire from an increasingly vigilant media. Procedures and codes are not goods in themselves, they are valued because they help us find and aim at the target. It follows that knowledge of them is not, of itself, sufficient to equip officials to respond to the new imperatives.  They must have more than extrinsic reasons – fear of punishment, protection- for following them. Those of us who are concerned with their education must find ways of making clear the intrinsic good they help us find and achieve.  The first step is, I suggest, is to put the demands for accountability in the context of wider changes in the character of democracy. I attempt to do that in the following remarks. I confess my focus is on the civil servant rather than the politician or government minister. However since my case is that the educational needs of the civil servant cannot be identified without first understanding her role within a radically changing design for democracy, my remarks have wider application.

The increasing demand that politicians and public servants should be more accountable for their activities is a symptom of a larger phenomenon. The character of our democracy is changing. Democracy is a complicated notion containing different and competing impulses.  It is a demanding, if not impossible ideal, and the institutions that attempt to realise it always fall short of the task. Consequently, any design for democracy is provisional; open to change as the stresses and strains inherent in the democratic project accumulate to the point where some rebalancing is required. There is growing agreement that we are at such a point today.

One reason that democracy is valued is because it provides the best protection from the arbitrary abuse of power. The ‘authoritative allocation of values’ that is the State’s purpose requires a strong centralised authority just as does its responsibility to protect its citizens from external and internal threats. The constraints generated by liberal democratic representative government protect us from the abuse of that power.

Democracy has also been valued for the possibility it offers for the discovery of common purposes that respect all our interests. The first reason is now predominant. Democracy is less and less valued as a terrain where programmes for social transformation can be launched and support for them mobilised. It now commends itself for the opportunities it offers to expose failings, assert rights, and veto policies. The decreasing trust in politicians and public servants we observe together with the increasing surveillance of government activities are evidence of this shift within our democratic political culture. 

To be accountable is to be under an obligation to report accurately on what you have done and to explain why you were justified in doing it. Until the recent past, the conversation of democratic accountability was dominated by that between citizens and politicians. Public servants worked in the shadows of their ministers, while a largely partisan media facilitated the communication between political parties and their supporters. National broadcast media reported on political doings with respect and strict impartiality. All this has changed. Partisanship has declined among the print media. They have been joined by television and radio stations in casting a cold eye on government. The media searchlights extend their range to include civil servants as they search for policy failures and the identity of the guilty. Now we must take note of four interlocutors in the conversations of democratic accountability: politicians, the media, public servants and the public.  It follows that accountability issues can arise in 16 distinct conversations  (between politicians and citizens, civil servants and politicians, media and civil servants…)  This indicates how complex any comprehensive treatment of accountability must be. I attempt no such account here. Instead, I identify the main trends in reflecting on the changes in just three of the conversations. These are the conversations between citizens and politicians, between politicians and civil servants and between civil servants and citizens. 

Citizens and politicians: the changing role of political parties.

Political parties have played a key role in the conversation between citizens and the state. The emergence of mass political parties was crucial to the success of the democratic revolution. It is easy to forget the apprehension with which the extension of the suffrage was viewed in the 19th century. Since the aristocratic order had lost credibility, no reason could be found, in principle, to deny universal (male) suffrage. Nonetheless, how could it work in practice? To extend the suffrage beyond the property owning middle-class was surely dangerous. Uneducated, the numerous working class was open to manipulation by ‘demagogues’ who could point to the gross inequalities that separated them from their ‘betters’ and promise radical reform. To give them the vote was to give them power: why would they not use it to ‘come and collect’ so destroying the fabric of society?  If industrial capitalism made preservation of the aristocratic order impossible, it also generated conflicts of interest that made democracy unlikely.

For democracy to succeed sharply divergent and conflicting interests had to be acknowledged and addressed without fatal damage being done to the interdependence that lay concealed beneath them. The mass political parties represented broad strands of interest. Competition among them reflected the antagonisms that divided society. It also contained them. The parties were committed to the rules of the game that allowed no end to the competition in a final victory by one side or another. Supported by the newspapers and journals associated with them, the parties worked to convince their supporters of the merits of their programmes. Supporters did not join a party, or vote for it, because on a rational calculation they reckoned it would advance their interests. They joined/voted because it was what people like them did. The party was an authoritative voice instructing them in what their interests were. It provided a master narrative in which an individual could place himself. 

Of course, while the parties’ roles as social identifiers rendered their followers docile, they did not make them stupid. The parties had to work hard to ensure the lessons they taught did, indeed, deliver. Parties, with their intellectuals and conflicting factions had, then, to debate policy and attempt to reconcile the short term with the long term. They had to form a view of what was desirable and how it might be made possible.  

Peter Mair (Mair 2005) documents how parties, in all western democracies, are moving away from this role. Electoral turnout is falling. Electoral instability increases as voters are more and more ready to switch their preferences from election to election. Membership of political parties is falling. Mair analyse the change as a process of disconnection of parties from society. They are becoming, he argues, ‘agencies that govern-in the widest sense of the term-rather than represent. They bring order rather than give voice.’ (20)

This trend is clearly related to the growing individualism of our political culture. It is a manifestation of the post modern turn that has seen, since the late 1950s the gradual fading away of grand narratives that provided the context in which individual narratives could find meaning and claim recognition and respect. The nature of this change is indicated when we consider how difficult it is to explain to those in their twenties and early thirties what allegiance to a political party, church or trade union meant to their grand parents. 

The development can also be related to Philip Bobbit’s ( Bobbitt 2002) widely discussed analysis of  how the form of state changes as strategic exigencies and the imperatives  of legitimation interact. The strategic environment has been transformed following the collapse of the Russian empire, globalization, ICT, international terrorism and the availability of weapons of mass destruction. Put these developments together with the internal changes discussed above and we have a transformation in the form of the state as profound as that that ushered in the nation-state in the 19th century.  The nation-state, is giving away to the ‘market-state’. The key question is what are the states for? In the era of the nation state the answer was ‘to protect the nation and advance its welfare’. The nation-state, that is to say, claimed legitimacy on the basis  its responsibility to the nation for its welfare. The market-state justifies itself for its commitment to ‘maximise the opportunities of its citizens’. The nation-state provided the context in which mass parties could emerge as the main conduit of the citizens’ conversation with their representatives. With its demise the conversation changes. In his historical analysis of representative government Bernard Manin (Manin 1997 ) argues that party democracy is giving away to audience democracy. In this new version of democracy, voters chose to support a party because they trust its leader. Hence the leader’s ability to project a positive media image is all-important. This, paradoxically, can require a distancing from politics and its wrangling. Performance is considered more important than a future promised in political programmes. Parties no longer organise or articulate public opinion. They respond to it as it is frequently reported in public opinion polls. They seek the advice of marketing experts and work with focus groups to find a brand image. In party democracy conversation between parties and the electorate went beyond discussions of the interests of constituents to include the identification of interdependencies. It sought to place these in a framework in which mutual obligations could be expressed in common purposes. The production of a certain type of society was one item on the political agenda. This language of production is seldom heard as the conversation is now concerned with the citizen as a consumer of state services whose rights must be respected and whose anxieties concerning the abuse of power allayed.

The Conversation between Minister and Bureaucrat

The change in the conversation between representatives and the electorate is of such a magnitude that it cannot but have an impact on the relationship between bureaucrat and politician. However, it is far more difficult to document this change. Each democracy has its own specific civil service tradition that gives the relationship its distinctive character. As a result, the impact of the change takes different forms in different regimes. The comparative study of public administration has not advanced to the stage where reliable evidence on the topic is available. Nonetheless, I will attempt some generalisations.

The relationship between bureaucrat and Minister is based on a division of labour. Both operate within their own distinctive horizons: where you stand determines what you see. The minister’s role brings with it very different concerns from those that preoccupy the departmental head as he oversees the implementation of policy and its formulation. The political and administrative tasks must be coordinated. The relationship is hierarchical and the Minister has final authority. Nonetheless, the conflicts and tensions that inevitably accompany any division of labour cannot be resolved by Ministerial fiat. Some merging of horizons is necessary. The more readily each can locate their interests in the horizon of the others concerns, the easier the relationship will be and the more successful its outcomes. Democratic accountability means that the onus is on the civil servant to make his concerns intelligible within the Minister’s horizon. The politician has no reciprocal obligation, though, of course, the better he can relate his interests to the concerns of the bureaucrat the more productive the conversation will be.

In the era of the nation–state, shared commitment to the nation, its welfare and development, provided a framework in which Minister and civil servant could meet and recognise each others contribution to the national project. As that grand narrative fades the conversation becomes more difficult.

The pressure is on the minister to respond promptly to a public opinion regularly alerted to policy failure by media and opposition. As the important role media advisers (spin doctors) now plays indicates the management of appearances has high priority. Much to do with the medium to long term and the complexity of issues gets lost in translation as civil servants attempt to communicate their concerns in the new political horizon.

This difficulty explains the general belief (e.g. Suleiman 2003) that our civil services are becoming politicized. The relative independence senior civil servants once enjoyed is diminished and they judge that the ‘advice, assistance and influence’ it is their responsibility to provide can no longer question the Minister’s intentions. They become somewhat reluctant aides to the Minister in fighting what is now a continuous election campaign. Or they find themselves sidelined as the Minister turns to media, and other, advisers for guidance.

It is this context that New Public Management (NPM) should be assessed. NPM is an offshoot of the New Right. In retrospect the New Right appears less, as its self-understanding suggests a reinstatement of liberal economics and more as an adaptation to the realities of the market-state. Certainly, its ambitions to roll back the state to its essentials- enforcing contracts and protecting its citizens-was nowhere realised. While states’ management of their economies shifted from the ownership of key assets to regulation, the capitalist utopia of untrammelled markets remained as distant as ever. The New Right provoked a change of view both of how the state’s business was justified and how it should be organized. Now directed at the individual citizen as consumer, they were to be organized along the lines laid down by the twentieth century business model.

Promoted throughout the OECD state, NPM has been more influential in English speaking States than elsewhere. Its success in transforming the way in which the public sector understands its business and the role of the public sector has been greater than its accomplishments in changing the way business is actually done. This cultural transformation is indicated by the replacement of ‘public administration’ by ‘public management’ and the takeover of continuing education for public servants by management schools. 

NPM provides a new framework for the relationship between minister and senior civil servant. The relationship is that of a principal and his agent. The principal has interests: to advance these he needs the services of an agent whose own legitimate interests may conflict with those of the principal. The solution to this divergence of interests and the possibilities of self-seeking with guile that it presents is to be found in the careful crafting of a contract between the principal and his agent. The twentieth century business model with its emphasis on strategic management, supported by systems for monitoring and control instructs us how this can be given effect. The minister is responsible for setting the objectives of his department. The departmental head draws up a strategic plan in which the organization’s environment is analysed and feasible outcomes identified that will bring matters nearer these objectives. These provide the basis of business plans, and ultimately, for the management of individual performance. The new language that this introduces is clearly instrumental. It is concern is not with is right or fitting to do but with technical analysis of the most efficient and effective means to given ends. As we have seen one important end is protection: protection of the minister from the self-seeking civil servant and the protection of the public from the self seeking of both. Hence the interest in governance and the systems for regulation and oversight it can provide.

Civil Servant and Citizen

The relationship between public servant and citizen is changing in line with the developments outlined above. The most obvious sign is the designation of citizen as customer. The formalisation of decision-making in carefully programmed routines gives bureaucracy its capacity to deliver services, efficiently, equitably and to a consistent standard. However those that interact with it can find it difficult to understand the decisions it delivers and frontline staff has little incentive to explain the rules or consider how they might be interpreted to fit more closely the contours of a particular case. Departments of state and state agencies now display customer charters asserting there commitment to their customers and specifying their standards of service delivery: evidence of efforts to turn their bureaucracies attention towards the needs of their customers. 

The new customer culture goes further than these attempts to improve machine bureaucracy. The endeavour to fit the service to customers needs can raise questions as to what the service should be. These questions gain greater force when the service is seen to have failed. For example, the standardised solutions of welfare bureaucracies have nowhere solved problems of persistent poverty or social exclusion. Solutions to problems of this complexity require a different form of organization that is open to collaboration with other organizations and where decision-making is decentralized to those closest to the problem. The customer now understood as a stakeholder is brought into the decision-making process. Of course, this network form of organization based on partnership is not confined to social welfare but can be found across a range of policies.

These emerging organizational forms are changing the relationship between interest groups and civil servants. In the nation-state, political parties aggregated interests working to ensure that particular interests were judged against a version of the public interest. Civil servants were wary of interest groups. They reminded ministers of how unrepresentative of the public good they were. They were more of a necessary evil than

the indispensable partners in the policy process that they have now become. Though, of course, time and habitude could lead to cosy relations with the enemy.

Adapting to the new democracy: the strategic imperative

The above considerations show that the design for democracy is changing in significant ways. At this time of transition it is difficult to offer any evaluation. Though I share the views of those who see no inherent threat to democracy in the developments. (e.g. Rosanvallon 2006 ) The democratic culture appears as robust as ever. Indeed, the commitment to human rights has never been as widespread or as strong. The dangers will come from failures to adapt our institutions to the changes. To use the language of public management: adapting culture and structure to the newly emerging design for democracy is the strategic imperative for the civil service. Can adequate responses be found within the framework of NPM alone? The Irish experience suggests the answer is no. 

NPM supposes that the role of the civil service is to assist democracy by the efficient and effective delivery of public services. This assistance can be improved by deploying the management technologies that have proved successful in the private sector.  This view contrast with that which emerged in Britain as the state reformed and enlarged its administrative capacities to take up the responsibilities of the nation-state. The Northcote-Trevelyan report of 1854 that laid the foundations of the new civil service concluded that:

It may safely be asserted that as matters now stand, the government of the country could not be carried on without the aid of an efficient body of permanent officers, occupying a position duly subordinate to that of the Ministers who are directly responsible to the Crown and to Parliament, yet possessing sufficient independence, character ability and experience to be able advise, assist, and to some extent, influence those who are from time to time set over them. (Hennessy 1989 511)

What is envisaged in the relationship between civil servant and bureaucrat is not fully comprehensible without recognising overtones from the departing aristocratic order. This allowed for a subservience that was not servile and an authority based on position that recognised itself as service. The civil servant is not an agent providing a service based on expertise. He is a partner in deciding what is to be done. His contribution is based not only on his liberal education but also on the practical sense that only long experience of policy implementation can impart. The ability of the relationship so understood to coordinate the distinct but interdependent political and administrative tasks ensured its survival into the fully democratic age. In this age, the common purpose of the nation-state supplemented, if it did not fully replace, the loyalties of class and position within a ruling establishment.

The relationship cannot continue in this form in the new order. The notion of a civil servant as a generalist with a prudence uniformed by any technical expertise becomes obsolete as policy formulation becomes more complex and the demands for efficient and effective implementation more pressing. The sense of duty the relationship inculcated encouraged dedicated service and inhibited the abuse of power. When, as was inevitable, incompetence and corruption were found, loyalty to the cause provided partial cover and a forgiving spirit. We can only be thankful those days have gone. But will the civil servant as expert manager have both the competencies and sense of duty the new order needs?

NPM is most convincing in circumstances where the ends of policy are clear. It is, then, when its lessons on efficiency and effectiveness and customer care make most sense and its case that the civil servant should be a master of management techniques is at its strongest. As we saw when examining the changing conversation between civil servants and citizens, the message that the citizen is customer is well understood. This same commitment to customer service is bringing civil servants, in Ireland, into new kinds of engagement with citizens and interest groups. This happens when the ends of policy are uncertain and the means towards poorly understood. In these circumstances, progress is made when participants are willing to redefine their interests as their interdependencies come into sharper focus and the lesson learnt in implementation instruct the reformulation of ends. The organizational form for this effort at problem solving in the merging of horizons is very different from the machine bureaucracy that is the basis for NPM. Furthermore, it is difficult to see this activity as a service provided for democracy. Rather it is an element of democracy in action. In these arrangements civil servants continue to contribute to the deciding the ends of policy as they did in the era of the nation-state. Now they do so in a different way, in a different context and in a new relationship with those elected to authority over them.

We have hardly begun to come to terms with the implications of these developments or to think seriously about the institutional framework that will ensure they enhance our democracy. As we do one thing is certain. We will need an understanding of accountability that extends beyond that which a preoccupation with accountability as protection from the abuse of power provides. 

This preoccupation encourages us to think of the problem as one of contract enforcement. The citizen is principal, the state her agent. Clearer specification of outcomes and closer scrutiny of performance is necessary to align state services more closely to the principal’s wants. The limitations of this view lie in its underlying assumption that preferences are always known and unproblematic. It forgets that a major task of democracy has been, and continues to be, the discovery of what our interests are in discussion of our interdependencies and the problems these present. How, in the new democracy can we make public officials accountable for their performance in assisting with this vital task?

Education, we are told should not be a monologue in which the superior wisdom of the teacher is transmitted to the empty minds (yawning receptacles?) of the students.  It is, at its best, a conversation in which the questions and responses of the teacher prompts the student to see his world in a wider and deeper perspective. The deliberative dimension of democracy reminds us that democracy should be a public education. The formation public officials need in response to the challenges of accountability is best found in a conversation about the changes to our democracy and their consequences for those privileged to be its servants. The organisers of the conference deserve our thanks for allowing that conversation. It is the best answer to the question posed to this panel.

References

Bobbitt, Philip (2002) The Shield of Achilles: war, peace and the course of history. New York: Alfred A Knopf.

Hennessy, Peter (1989) Whitehall London: Secker and Warburg.

Manin Bernard (1997) The principles of representative government  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [First published as Principes du gouvernement representatif . Paris: Calmann-Levy 1995.]

Mair, Peter (2005) “Democracy Beyond Parties” Centre for the Study of Democracy. Paper 05’06. http://repositories.cdlib.org/csd/05-06

Rosanvallon, Pierre [edited by Samuel Moyn] (2006) Democracy Past and Future. New York: Columbia University Press.

Suleiman, Ezra  (2003) Dismantling Democratic States. Princeton, New Jersey:Princeton University Press.