accountability in politics

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"Transparency makes politics a running argument
about decision-making, not about decisions."
— William J. Stuntz

Accountability implies that people take responsibility and are held liable for their actions. Ethics refers to standards of conduct and one's moral judgment. Legislation may address the former but it takes character and integrity to satisfy the latter. No law will change human nature. We now have ethics commissioners, conflict-of-interest guidelines, access-to-information laws, and more intrusive auditors in the public service than ever. In addition, we have an aggressively suspicious media and a better-educated public. Despite increased transparency and more sanitary procedures in public administration, we are despondent about the quality of government and the integrity of its practitioners.

Politicians and bureaucrats have become convenient scapegoats for whatever we are unhappy about. Our expectations of them have risen but human nature has not changed. We expect government to operate like an infallible machine but neglect to appreciate that people in it get their work done by "networking" and building "strategic alliances," just as they do in the private sector. And these people, no less than their counterparts in the business world, are no less flawed.

Cleaning up Ottawa requires rules, but rules are only as good as those who live by them. The findings of the Gomery report revealed that the failings in the sordid sponsorship scandal were not in the system's rules but in the people administering them. The Conservative proposals to add more auditors and officers in the public sector — over and above the hundreds added by Paul Martin to the current audit system — may do more harm than good for the efficiency of public administration. No one, however, ought to believe that mismanagement, corruption, influence-peddling and waste will be a thing of the past.

— Nelson Wiseman, Toronto Star (2006/04/13)

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