Problems With Accountability

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61
Academic
Citations on the
Problems With
Accountability
A collection of scholarly citations supporting

the idea that representative accountability to
voters is not as robust a mechanism as many
scholars assume.
By Nsubuga, D’Angelo – September 16 2018
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By far the most common assumption
is that transparent, accessible information
will generate accountable policies and
budgets and responsive, accountable state
behaviour – an assumption that in fact
glosses over a number of leaps.
– Rosemary McGee & John Gaventa 2011 –

Assessing Impact of Accountability
The congressional sunshine initiative

became a tool for the very special interests
whose power the reforms were supposed
to dilute. Corporations and lobbying
groups have seized on the open hearings
to help them hold legislators accountable
as never before.
– Martha Hamilton 1984 – The Washington

Post
Opening Up Congress
Greater “electoral accountability”

mostly seems to have involved catering to
the interests of an affluent (and probably
more attentive) minority of the electorate.
– Christopher Achen & Larry Bartels 2016

Democracy for Realists
5/19/19, 11:14 AM
How can citizens control legislators

when most citizens pay scant attention to
public affairs? Why should legislators
worry about citizens’ preferences when
they know most citizens are not really
watching them?
– Douglas Arnold 1993 – Can Inattentive

Citizens Control Representatives?
The people as a whole tend to be

quite indifferent to policies and therefore
are not eager to hold government
accountable for the policies it produces.
– John Hibbing & Elizabeth Theiss-Morse

2004 – Stealth Democracy
5/19/19, 11:14 AM
We now have cameras operating in

the House and Senate, which on rare
occasions capture actual debate, but are
more commonly used as a stage backdrop
for politicians recording something for use
in their next fund-raiser or political ad.
When public votes are taken much more
often, then more votes are also taken just
for show in an attempt to rally one’s
supporters or to embarrass the other party,
rather than for any substantive legislative
purpose. Politicians who are always on-
stage are likely to display less civility and
collegiality and greater polarization, lest
they be perceived as insufficiently devoted
to their own causes – or even showing the
dreaded signs of a willingness to
compromise.
– Timothy Taylor 2019 – When Special

Interests Play in the Sunlight
The problem is, of course, is that if

Americans aren’t paying attention, they
can’t hold anybody accountable...If we use
statistics on what the people don’t
know...the statistics are just appalling.
– Rick Shenkman 2008 – CNN (How Stupid

Are Americans)
5/19/19, 11:14 AM
Then there is the question of to

whom our elected officials are
accountable. One would presume the
obvious answer is the electorate; at least,
that would be the ideal. However, there are
times elected officials must transcend
accountability to those they directly
represent for the greater ideal of benefiting
the country as a whole. There is also the
clearly problematic temptation for our
representatives to serve the interests of
donors or others with influence.
Accountability to the wrong people for the
wrong reasons is at the root of government
corruption.
– Glenn Davis 2014 – Transparency vs.

Accountability
Francis Fukuyama 2014 – Political Order and

Political Decay
5/19/19, 11:14 AM
Because of familiar collective action

problems, well-organized groups, who
monitor legislative activity closely, are
much better situated than the mass
electorate to secure real accountability
from incumbent legislators. And these
groups have more resources for
demanding accountability; they have not
just individual votes with which to
threaten lawmakers, but the ability to
aggregate many votes and to withhold or
deploy resources like lobbyist assistance,
contributions, and the threat of
independent spending. Unorganized
groups do not enjoy these advantages and
often lack the ability even to push their
issues on to the agenda. All of this suggests
that the rhetoric of widespread
accountability n1ay obscure the reality of
too much accountability for some and not
enough for many.
– Jane Schacter 2006 – Political

Accountability
5/19/19, 11:14 AM
Voters cannot hold legislators

responsible without sufficient information
about what legislators have, in fact, done.
Yet that sort of information consistently
eludes the electorate. It is an article of faith
among political scientists that citizens are
woefully uninformed about politics.
– Jane Schacter 2006 – Political

Accountability
5/19/19, 11:14 AM
This review underscores the falsity of

the conventional wisdom – often born out
of frustration at irrational, insensitive, or
lazy decision makers – that accountability
is a cognitive or social panacea: “All we
need to do is hold the rascals
accountable.” Two decades of research
now reveal that (a) only highly specialized
subtypes of accountability lead to
increased cognitive effort; (b) more
cognitive effort is not inherently beneficial;
it sometimes makes matters even worse;
and (c) there is ambiguity and room for
reasonable disagreement over what
should be considered worse or better
judgment when we place cognition in its
social or institutional context. In short,
accountability is a logically complex
construct that interacts with
characteristics of decision makers and
properties of the task environment to
produce an array of effects – only some of
which are beneficial.
– Jennifer Lerner & Philip Tetlock 1999 –

Accounting for the Effects of
Accountability
5/19/19, 11:14 AM
Accountability is likely to amplify

biases...People can simply adopt positions
likely to gain the favor of those to whom
they are accountable, thereby allowing
them to avoid the unnecessary cognitive
work of analyzing the pros and cons of
alternative courses of action, interpreting
complex patterns of information, and
making difficult trade-offs. In support of
these predictions, experimental work has
repeatedly shown that expecting to
discuss one’s views with an audience
whose views are known led participants to
strategically shift their attitudes toward
that of the audience...Defensive bolstering
should also lead people to generate as
many reasons as they can why they are
right and potential critics are wrong. This
generation of thoughts consistent with
one’s views then leads people to hold even
more extreme opinions.
– Jennifer Lerner & Philip Tetlock 1999 –

Accounting for the Effects of
Accountability
Philip Tetlock 1999 – Accountability Processes
5/19/19, 11:14 AM
The American system does not make

it easy for citizens to hold elected officials
accountable for governmental decisions.
– Douglas Arnold 2004 – Congress, Press

and Accountability
Vertical accountability via elections

has proven largely ineffective as a
mechanism for ending the careers of
corrupt incumbents, though the failure of
this mechanism remains poorly
understood.
– Marcia Grimes 2015 – The Intricacies of

Accountability
5/19/19, 11:14 AM
Although the societal accountability

mechanism linking transparency and good
government is often implied, it builds on a
number of assumptions seldom examined
empirically. This article unpacks the
assumptions of principal agent theories of
accountability and suggests that the logic
of collective action can be used to
understand why exposure of egregious and
endemic corruption may instead
demobilize the demos (i.e., resignation)
rather than enhance accountability (i.e.,
indignation). We explore these theoretical
contentions and examine how
transparency affects three indicators of
indignations versus resignation
—institutional trust, political involvement,
and political interest—given different
levels of corruption. The empirical
analyses confirm that an increase in
transparency in highly corrupt countries
tends to breed resignation rather than
indignation
– Monika Bauhr & Marcia Grimes 2015 –

The Implications of Transparency for
Societal Accountability
5/19/19, 11:14 AM
When you create a regulatory agency,

you put together a group of people whose
job is to solve some problem. They’re given
the power to investigate who’s breaking
the law and the authority to punish them.
Transparency, on the other hand, simply
shifts the work from the government to the
average citizen, who has neither the time
nor the ability to investigate these
questions in any detail, let alone do
anything about it. It’s a farce: a way for
Congress to look like it has done
something on some pressing issue without
actually endangering its corporate
sponsors.
– Aaron Swartz 2006 – When is

Transparency Useful?
0:00 / 0:43
Jonathan Haidt 2012 – Common Threats
5/19/19, 11:14 AM
Forcing the publication of votes in an

institutional setting that relies on
diplomatic practices can have deleterious
effects on accountability: In some cases,
the publication of votes might operate as a
window-dressing device, prompting the
public belief that [legislators] are
accountable since they publish their votes,
while real monitoring of the decision
makers’ stances is not possible.
– Stephanie Novak 2015 – Secrecy and

Publicity
The opening up of the legislative

process can make lawmakers much more
directly accountable to interest groups
whose support they may need for
reelection. Lobbyists, after all, now
actually sit in on committee markup
sessions. This may constrain the
policymaking efforts of lawmakers to
actions that serve the interests of narrow
groups at the expense of the broader
public good.
– Joseph Bessette 1994 – Mild Voice of

Reason
5/19/19, 11:14 AM
In the real world of American politics,

interested individuals and organizations,
not average citizens, have the greater
incentive and means to monitor the
government closely. This can open the
door to obstruction and policy distortion
as it enables regulatory capture by
interested parties who advocate freely for
their views without any countervailing
public voice.
– Bruce Cain 2014 – The Transparency

Paradox
Members of Congress, as individuals,

have little incentive to respond to general
interests, but have compelling reasons to
service organized groups. The electorate
rarely knows how members vote and does
not hold individual legislators responsible
for national conditions. Organized interest
groups do monitor the members' activity,
and they reward dedicated service with
campaign contributions and other
support.
– Quirk 1991 – Evaluating Congressional

Reform
5/19/19, 11:14 AM
(Members grow to) feel more

accountable to some constituents than to
others because the support of some
constituents is more important to them
than the support of others.
– Richard Fenno 1976 – House Members in

their Constituencies
If nobody else cares about it very

much, the special interest will get its way.
If the public understands the issue at any
level, then special interest groups are not
able to buy an outcome that the public
may not want. But the fact is that the
public doesn’t focus on most of the work of
the Congress. Most of the work of the
Congress is very small things... And all of
us, me included, are guilty of this: If the
company or interest group is (a) supportive
of you, (b) vitally concerned about an issue
that, (c) nobody else in your district knows
about or ever will know about, then the
political calculus is quite simple.
– Rep. Vin Weber (R-Min) 1995 – Speaking

Freely (Schram)
5/19/19, 11:14 AM
D’Angelo, King, Ranalli 2017 – Absurd

Accountability
Opening meetings to the public has

meant opening meetings to everyone,
including lobbyists, who, it has been
claimed, take an even greater part in
writing Ways and Means legislation than
they did in the past...Thus, the open
meetings have made members more
accountable to whoever cares to pay
attention.
– Rudder 1977 – Committee Reform
5/19/19, 11:14 AM
The assumed link leads from

awareness (through transparency and
information) to articulating voice (through
formal and informal institutions) and
ultimately accountability (changing the
incentives of providers so that they
respond in fear of sanctions). Yet, this
chain of causation is seldom explicitly
examined. In fact, many initiatives are
focussed at increasing transparency and
amplifying voice, without examining the
link of these with accountability.
– Joshi 2011 – Impact & Effectiveness of

Accountability
5/19/19, 11:14 AM
The final set of claims is that

transparency and accountability initiatives
lead to greater empowerment of poor
people...In the case of accountability
initiatives however the logic is less
straightforward: does the active practice of
holding public providers to account lead to
citizens getting empowered and more
likely to engage with other processes
related to citizenship? The causal
relationship might be the other way
around, it is citizens who are mobilised
and already participating in other ways
(advocacy, self provisioning [i.e. special
interest groups]) who are more likely to
engage in accountability activities.
– Joshi 2011 – Impact & Effectiveness of

Accountability
The article argues that existing

transparency policies do not actually
strengthen public accountability.
– Shkabatur 2012 – Transparency

With(out) Accountability
5/19/19, 11:14 AM
Overall, our review [of transparency

and accountability studies] found that
much of the current evidence relies on
untested normative, positivist
assumptions and under-specified
relationships between mechanisms and
outcomes. Much of the empirical work
reviewed is based on poorly articulated,
normatively-inspired ‘mixes’, that draw
unevenly from the concepts of
transparency, accountability, good
governance and empowerment. Virtually
none of the literature gathered explores
possible risks or documents negative
effects or arising from TAIs, although some
begins to note these at an anecdotal or
speculative level.
– John Gaventa & Rosemary McGee 2011 –

Impact of Transparency & Accountability
(evidence)
5/19/19, 11:14 AM
Despite its normative importance in

contemporary politics, democratic
accountability has not been well
developed conceptually... In academic
scholarship, references to democratic
accountability recur throughout the canon
of democratic theory, yet the concept has
rarely been the subject matter of sustained
theorizing.
– Craig T. Borowiak 2011 – Impact of

Transparency & Accountability
(evidence)
Government accountability, a true

cornerstone of representative government,
cannot function properly if the parties
competing for power are not being judged
on a correct basis by voters who under
such circumstances are unable to hold
their leaders accountable. If voters do not
know who the government is, the logic of
representative government is disrupted.
– Lauri Rapeli 2016 - Who to punish?

Retrospective voting.
5/19/19, 11:14 AM
Most important — and completely

ignored by the champions of transparency
— is the fact that even the most
conscientious citizens, dedicated to
following public affairs, have but one vote
to weigh in on myriad issues. Most of the
time, citizens cannot vote up or down any
specific program. Exceptions include some
local or state initiatives, such as bonds for
schools or referenda on social issues like
gay marriage. However, most of the time,
especially at the national level, voters
cannot be in favor of, say, much more
funding for climate change, only a little
more funding for ocean exploration, and
less funding for bombers (or any such
other combination). Rather, all they can do
is vote up or down their representative,
who, in turn, votes on many scores of
programs.
– Amitai Etzioni 2014 – Atlantic –

Transparency is Overrated
These first two accountabilities are in

tension: too much responsiveness to
particular citizens (i.e. too narrowly-drawn
“preference accountability”) can lead to
classic corruption.
– Lee Drutman 2013 – OpenGov

Conversations
5/19/19, 11:14 AM
Etzioni 2014 – Is Transparency the Best
5/19/19, 11:14 AM

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file:///Users/admin/Dropbox/CRI Website/AccountabilityNotes.

A collection of scholarly citations supporting

By Nsubuga, D’Angelo – September 16 2018

– Rosemary McGee & John Gaventa 2011 –

The congressional sunshine initiative

– Martha Hamilton 1984 – The Washington

Greater “electoral accountability”

– Christopher Achen & Larry Bartels 2016

How can citizens control legislators

– Douglas Arnold 1993 – Can Inattentive

The people as a whole tend to be

– John Hibbing & Elizabeth Theiss-Morse

We now have cameras operating in

– Timothy Taylor 2019 – When Special

The problem is, of course, is that if

– Rick Shenkman 2008 – CNN (How Stupid

Then there is the question of to

– Glenn Davis 2014 – Transparency vs.

Francis Fukuyama 2014 – Political Order and

Because of familiar collective action

– Jane Schacter 2006 – Political

Voters cannot hold legislators

– Jane Schacter 2006 – Political

This review underscores the falsity of

– Jennifer Lerner & Philip Tetlock 1999 –

Accountability is likely to amplify

– Jennifer Lerner & Philip Tetlock 1999 –

Philip Tetlock 1999 – Accountability Processes

The American system does not make

– Douglas Arnold 2004 – Congress, Press

Vertical accountability via elections

– Marcia Grimes 2015 – The Intricacies of

Although the societal accountability

– Monika Bauhr & Marcia Grimes 2015 –

When you create a regulatory agency,

– Aaron Swartz 2006 – When is

Jonathan Haidt 2012 – Common Threats

Forcing the publication of votes in an

– Stephanie Novak 2015 – Secrecy and

The opening up of the legislative

– Joseph Bessette 1994 – Mild Voice of

In the real world of American politics,

– Bruce Cain 2014 – The Transparency

Members of Congress, as individuals,

– Quirk 1991 – Evaluating Congressional

(Members grow to) feel more

– Richard Fenno 1976 – House Members in

If nobody else cares about it very

– Rep. Vin Weber (R-Min) 1995 – Speaking

D’Angelo, King, Ranalli 2017 – Absurd

Opening meetings to the public has

– Rudder 1977 – Committee Reform

The assumed link leads from

– Joshi 2011 – Impact & Eﬀectiveness of

The final set of claims is that

– Joshi 2011 – Impact & Eﬀectiveness of

The article argues that existing

– Shkabatur 2012 – Transparency

Overall, our review [of transparency

– John Gaventa & Rosemary McGee 2011 –

Despite its normative importance in

– Craig T. Borowiak 2011 – Impact of

Government accountability, a true

– Lauri Rapeli 2016 - Who to punish?