INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY IN THE AGE OF ORGANIZATIONS
PART IV:
Three Sorts of Accountability Forums
Book: The Predicaments of Publicness An Inquiry into the Conceptual Ambiguity of Public Administration
conceptualizations of publicness may have got lost in the study of public administration. The way the publicness of 'public organizations' has been conceptualized in the American study of public administration. Three different levels have been looked at: the macro level of the state and the market; the meso level of organizations; and the micro level of the individual. The liberal model of publicness concentrates on the relationship between the microlevel of individuals and the macrolevels of state and market. The relations of the three social different social levels will be the subject of this part of the book.
The first problem concerns the way the macro levels of the state and the market are seen from the viewpoint of the meso level of the organization. The second problem concerns how organizations, in their turn, are seen from the focus of the state or the market. The third problem concerns the confrontation between the individual and the organization. The aspect of the concept of publicness has not been given a lot of attention in the study of public administration, namely the ideological and moral character of publicness.
Even though the ethics of administration are a subject of increasing attention in the study of public administration, it remains to be the question whether the ethical framework that is used acknowledges the distinct public morality of 'public administration'. the strong connection between morality and behavior at the macro levels of the state and the market, but there is also a connection between morality and behavior at the meso level of the organization. The relation between morality and such behavior emerges from the cardinal values of the liberal model of publicness, namely the autonomy and freedom of the individual. A crucial understanding is that this autonomy and freedom do not come without their restrictions. An individual is not just alleviated by the fact he makes his own choices, he is also burdened by the acknowledgement that these choices are exclusively his – no one else can take the blame if things go wrong. In other words, autonomy and freedom are counterweighted by responsibility and accountability.
The notions of responsibility and accountability will figure as the starting point for approaching the problems of this part of the book. The domains of the state and the market on the one hand and organizations on the other will be presented as social constellations which revolve around an arrangement of relations of accountability. Before exploring the issues of responsibility and accountability, The First Problem connected Jane Jacobs's thesis about two coexistent, but incommensurable, moral syndromes (1992a). Jacobs claims that any mixture of these two moral syndromes gives rise to corruption. The second problem concerns the way that the market and state are based on the ontological precedence of the individual – as it has been proposed in the liberal model of publicness. The third problem considers the way an individual administrator serves both a public organization and the public interest.
8.2 Structures of Accountability
The officials who operate in the name of the state are approached with a lot of cynicism. In this respect, liberalism is quite misanthropist; people who have the capacity to practice power over other people are principally mistrusted.This mentality emerges from the principal autonomy of the individual: any corrosion of this autonomy should be resisted, any domain on which such an corrosion might occur has to be controlled one way or the other. The liberal model of publicness distinguishes three domains which exercise potential power over the individual: the state, the market, and civil society.
The misanthropist counterpart of this individual responsibility is the introduction of structures of accountability; such structures make it possible that individuals can be held accountable for their activities. According to Bovens (1998: 22), responsibility is a "complex idea that has many equally plausible definitions, though these definitions are rarely compatible". In the light of this research, a description of 'responsibility' is looked for that can be connected to the ontological position of the individual and his fundamental liberty.
In the liberal description of social reality, individuals are autonomous and as such they are free to do whatever they want to do, as long as they do not harm other persons.As the actions of an individual are the result of nothing but his free choice, he is fully responsible for these actions. This implies that in the case that an action of an individual actor does bring harm to another person, this actor and no one else should bear the moral burden of this decision or action. This form of responsibility can be seen as active, which is distinguished from the passive form of responsibility (Bovens 1998: 26). This passive form of responsibility is called accountability.
Accounting for oneself, taking responsibility, and justifying oneself, never happen in a vacuum; there is always something or someone who asks the questions or makes the accusations. Such asking and accusing happens mostly in the presence of some forum or other (p. 24). accountability always bears a public aspect (Nieuwenburg 2001: 32). The presence of an accountability forum enables people to learn what counts as good behavior (Van Gunsteren 1994: 64). They are punished for doing things wrong and rewarded for doing things right.
There are many different sorts of accountability forums, among which are the social domains of the market, the state and civil society – which are called empirical forums by Van Gunsteren (1994: 64). To start with, the accountability forum that can be found at the realm of the market is looked at. What 'responsibility' means in the context of the market, economic responsibility can be identified as the pursuit of rational self-interest. A commercial producer is responsible if he tries to optimize his set of preferences, which in general contains the preferences of making profit and of continuing his enterprise.
The accountability forum is the structure of the market itself. Notion of the 'discipline of the market', which implies that if a market actor does something 'wrong' he will be 'punished'. In economic reality this might mean that certain products are too expensive or not good enough, so that people will not buy them.
The law. Both producers and consumers have to comply to the legal guidelines, especially concerning the contractual fulfillment of commercial transactions. The rule of law cannot be the only accountability forum restricting the functioning of the state, because the laws are formulated by the officials of the state gathered in the parliament
The accountability forums of the market and of the parliamentary system are substantially different than that of law. If an accountable executive – such as a minister – fails, he is punished by sending him away through the parliamentary representatives. If these representatives fail, they will be punished by the electorate which will not vote for them any longer.
The distinction between passive and active responsibility also points at the connection between individuals and responsibility: a
perbedaan substansi sistem parlementer dan forum hukum, hukum berlaku surut paham pengertian hukum, kriteria hukum adalah tetap, sedangkan dari parlemen tidak pernah tahu apa yang dinilai baik atau salah. perbedaan lainnya adalah hubungan antara agen dan aturan hukum itu sendiri, individu bertanggung jawab penuh atas kerjaannya.
be responsible means that the elements of the moral system that marks a community are incorporated into the processes of individual deliberation. Responsibility becomes not just a liberal notion, but comes to refer to organic categories as well.
The distinction between passive and active responsibility also points at the connection between individuals and responsibility:
Active responsibility can only be ascribed to an individual, for it is based upon the mental process of deliberation. A responsible person evaluates the possible consequences of at least some potential courses of actions. In other words, a deliberating person assumes a causal relation between his own mental processes, his bodily actions, and the effect these bodily actions have on his external environment.
Passive responsibility is connected to the causal relation between a person's thoughts, actions and eventual consequences as well. Ideally, accountability is the simple reversal of active responsibility: someone has deliberated over the consequences his actions may yield, and afterwards that person is asked for the content of these deliberations. Of course, there may be a gap between the reasons given and the actual content of these deliberations
This means that someone cannot always be held accountable for the consequences of his actions, even though he had undertaken them deliberately (still, the person involved may reckon himself to be responsible).
Organizations can also be understood as empirical accountability forums; organizations provide an institutional platform that guides the repertoire of action courses of an individual just like the state or market. In a way, organizations as accountability forums take a mediating position between the individual and accountability forums of the state and the market. On the one hand, organizations take over the conceptual place of individuals in the market and the state. As such, the constraints of the market and the state apply to organizations and not any longer to individuals. On the other hand, as will become clear in this part of the book, organizations mitigate the capacities of the state and the market to act as accountability forums, because organizations cannot be held responsible like individuals – for the reason that organizations are not expected to think for themselvesOnly individual members of an organization can act responsibly; organization can only be held accountable.
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