Ten Theses on Accountability

Abstract

The following is an essay, that is to say an attempt, to rethink the debate around accountability. Accountability has been frequently lauded as an essential value of democracy and an idea that is unopposable. Through the following ten theses, I build an argument that accountability is conceptually and practically opposed to the very thing that it is held to guarantee, namely, self-government. I do so by rethinking the contours of the debate between Carl Friedrich and Herman Finer by showing that values of each persist within the existing accountability arrangement. As we understand it today, accountability is best conceived of as a technological concept of automation that is reinforced by the degradation of skills of self-government entrenched into the current practices of the administrative state. This is the nature of accountability in the administrative state, a concept of domination that is premised on the impracticality of self-government.