Activism in the 21st Century: Holding to Account

In 1796 George Washington, the fist president of the United States, wrote to a friend,“I am sure the mass of citizens in these United States mean well, and I firmly believe they will always act well whenever they can obtain a right understanding of matters….”

Two hundred years later, in her 1989 Massey Lectures Dr. Ursula Franklin, whose insight into the workings of society is unmatched, made clear what “right understanding” means. She explained what stared citizens in the face: “Whenever someone talks to you about the benefits and costs of a particular project don’t ask, ‘What benefits?’ ask ‘Whose benefits, and whose costs?’” Answering the who question publicly, fully and fairly before they act is the essence of the public accountability obligation of decision-makers. In North America, proposed oil pipelines are an obvious example.

Public accountability means the obligation of decision-makers in power to explain publicly, fully and fairly, before and after the fact, how they are carrying out responsibilities that affect citizens in important ways. They are to publicly explain the outcomes they intend to bring about, for whom, and why, so that knowledgeable citizen and organization activists can publicly explain the implications of the intentions and reasons as they see them. This is so citizens can sensibly set their level of trust in the motivations and ability of the decision-makers, and act to commend, alter or halt the intentions. The level of citizen trust governs the extent of decision-makers’ power — even if citizens allow them to be dictators.

The public accountability obligation is likely the strongest regulator of fairness in any society, culture or religion. The public explanation obligation is not something tacked onto a performance expectation. The obligation to explain publicly produces a self-regulating influence on decision-makers that serves the public good and drives their performance.

Holding to account means the process of obtaining — extracting if necessary — the needed public explanations from authorities at the time they are needed, validating them for their fairness and completeness, and doing something fair and sensible with explanations given in good faith.

This is why citizen uprisings and “occupy” movements must first identify and set out what they aim to achieve, clearly enough to be a guide to action for the decision-makers, and hold them to account publicly and effectively. Holding to account identifies what stands in the way of decision-makers being made to take action that produces fairness in society.

As to government accountability, it took a Qatar student, in a May 2011 BBC Doha debate on whether the Wikileaks disclosures were good or bad for society, to publicly point out the problem. He asked the debating panel a dead-centre public accountability question: “How can we trust the government if we don’t know what it’s planning?” Planning means what government intends as outcomes, for whom. Western legislators tout “democracy” but have never grasped the public accountability concept and seen the need to install in law the accountability obligation that would allow citizens to sensibly decide their trust in their executive governments.

The Franklin principle produces two basic, powerful and unassailable questions that activists must put to decision-makers such as executive governments whenever their intentions would affect citizens in important ways:

Who would gain what benefits from the intentions and why they should, in both the short and longer term
Who would bear what costs and risks, and why they should, in both the short and longer term

Intentions to be identified include what decision-makers’ intend as their own performance and management control standards that citizens have the right to see them meet for what they are already doing.

Activists must overcome their own strategy thinking tending to stay “within the box” and hold to account. They must overcome authorities’ thinking within the box as an ingrained way of thinking about the processes they control and their own actions. This stems from their training and experience. The thinking of those essential to installing the public explanation obligation effectively in the law – elected representatives, senior civil servants, lawyers and auditors – must also be brought out of the box.

A critical example of thinking outside the box is that of the great 20th century social psychologist Kurt Lewin. In his work on driving and restraining forces, he argued that it is better to work to reduce driving forces than to try to increase restraining forces. This is because powerful authorities can simply crank up their driving forces –- easy, for example, for a prime minister in the parliamentary system having a clear parliamentary majority and an opposition not holding to account effectively. Activists are still in the mode of trying to restrain driving forces.

Holding publicly and effectively to account acts to reduce driving forces, because decision-makers have never been held to account effectively, let alone before the fact. They are therefore not equipped to defeat an unassailable public explanation obligation.

Activist citizens must organize themselves into issue groups to identify authorities’ most important commonsense responsibilities in the issue that concerns them. They must then hold the decision-makers publicly to account for their intended and actual performance, and willingness to explain their intentions and reasons publicly, fully and fairly.

Henry E. McCandless,

General Convenor,

Citizens’ Circle for Accountability