This article discusses the concept of accountability in relation to those holding public office in democratic states. It argues that the concept of accountability requires careful specification and that it is frequently distorted when put to the service of theoretical models and normative principles. The article develops a definition of accountability and a range of distinctions between forms of accountability, asks what forms of accountability might be appropriate to modern democratic systems and argues that some combinations of democracy and accountability can have serious negative consequences for politics. The article concludes by discussing the types of accountability that are pertinent to recent claims that international institutions should be made more democratically accountable. In each case, the common tendency to inflate the concept of accountability is associated with demands for accountability that threaten both democratic consolidation and the distinctive character of accountability itself.Modern democracies rest on a combination of two ideas: that those who rule should do so in the public interest or in response to the public will; and that they will be more likely to do so when they are, in some way, representative of, and/or accountable to those they rule. This much is uncontentious among most democrats. 1 Thereafter the water becomes muddier. Leaving aside issues of representation, there is a series of difficulties about how, who should hold whom accountable for what, and even recognising these four dimensions leaves untouched the question of what it is for an individual or institution to be 'accountable' (Behn,
T he theoretical base of social work appears to have undergone a considerable expansion in recent years. The era of the 'psychiatric deluge" seems to have passed and a concern with sociology, social policy, philosophy, and so on, has led to an apparent plethora of theoretical perspectives being made available to social workers. Theorists in social work have consequently concerned themselves with attempting to 'rescue' social work from confusion by proposing means by which ±is new theoretical eclecticism can be transformed into a set of coherent practices. These attempts can be seen as beginning with Halmos, whose Faith of the Counsellors^ can be seen as double edged, being both an analysis and a eulogy, followed by Nokes's' attempt to replace philosophy with primarily administrative and practical skill. The major present attempts are centred around Marxist formulations on the one hand^ and the unitary and integrated perspectives' on the other. However, in making these 'rescue' attempts, these conflicting theories may in fact share a common philosophical problem, namely, epistemological idealism.The radical critique of social work, for example, sees the caseworker as an integral part of professional culture :Trofessional eyes do not see the distortions in the world which this particular kind of vision produces . . . The aiodes of thought and action which characterise any particular professional activity are not observable from within professional culture.'Î n this view the professional is an idealist in that he does not see the necessity of questioning ±e basis of his own values and beliefs. When Timms and Timsns write: * I have discussed earlier drafts of this paper with several people and I am grateful to them all for their comments and criticisms. In particular I would like to thank Alan Butler at the University of Leeds Department of Psychiatry, who supervised the work from which this paper has developed, and Bob Ashcroft at Bradford University who helped enormously by pinpoindne inconsistencies and problems in earlier drafts and who also gave considerable tinae over to discussion of the issues raised by the paper. 83Mark Philp 'The [theoretical] orientation, we are saying, should not violate the values to be found in the practice we call social work.'' they assume tbat values are free individual acts-not socially determined elements. To this extent we can say that professional culture holds an idealist epistemology. Yet it is possible to suggest that the radical critique also does. Jones writes:The old unsatisfactory mould has been brcAen, and it has become possible at last to look at the basic issues in social work without preconceptions, for the first time since the war,'T he radical critique is held up as a new objectivity-a theoretical perspective free from social determinants. The problem with this approach is that each dieory attempts to eststblish the primacy of a particular form c^ theorising and practice. Each argues that the other has failed to grasp what social work shoiild really be about. In doin...
This essay engages critically with the recent emergence of “political realism” in political theory (centrally in the work of Raymond Geuss and Bernard Williams). While sympathetic to and convinced of the importance of the core of the enterprise which it identifies, the essay is critical of some of the claims made about the independence of politics from morality and the historically contingent character of political values, and suggests that realism may itself succumb to illusion. The final section sketches an account of the nature of evaluative judgment in the study of politics and, in conclusion, defends both the pluralist character of political theory and the pressing importance of the questions that realism raises and that are inadequately attended to by the bulk of post-war political theory.
This article argues for greater realism in political theory with respect to judgements about what politicians ought to do and how they ought to act. It shows that there are major problems in deducing what a given politician should do from the value commitments that are common to liberalism and it makes a case for recognizing the major role played by the context of action and particular agent involved. It distinguishes political virtue from moral virtues and argues that the ‘decisionist’ features of political agency render evaluation a partly post hoc process. The article advocates a version of political realism that is rooted in an understanding of the distinctive character of political rule and that provides the basis for a contextualist but non-relativist account of ‘what is to be done’.
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