Leadership accountability
Encyclopedia
Leadership
Leadership
Leadership has been described as the “process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task". Other in-depth definitions of leadership have also emerged.-Theories:...

 accountability
Accountability
Accountability is a concept in ethics and governance with several meanings. It is often used synonymously with such concepts as responsibility, answerability, blameworthiness, liability, and other terms associated with the expectation of account-giving...

describes the personalization of protest and questioning concerning "up system" responsibility for political violence
Political violence
Political violence is a common means used by people and governments around the world to achieve political goals. Many groups and individuals believe that their political systems will never respond to their political demands. As a result they believe that violence is not only justified but also...

; corruption
Political corruption
Political corruption is the use of legislated powers by government officials for illegitimate private gain. Misuse of government power for other purposes, such as repression of political opponents and general police brutality, is not considered political corruption. Neither are illegal acts by...

; and environmental and other harm. There is similar "second track" movement, challenging local power elites in public service, the workplace, and religious organizations. This is evidenced by new institutions such as the International Criminal Court
International Criminal Court
The International Criminal Court is a permanent tribunal to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression .It came into being on 1 July 2002—the date its founding treaty, the Rome Statute of the...

 (ICC) (est. 2002); laws such as the United Nations Convention against Corruption
United Nations Convention against Corruption
The United Nations Convention against Corruption is the first legally binding international anti-corruption instrument. In its 8 Chapters and 71 Articles, the UNCAC obliges its States Parties to implement a wide and detailed range of anti-corruption measures affecting their laws, institutions and...

 (2003); and individual accountability for environmental victimization, e.g., U.S. Environment Agency
Environment Agency
The Environment Agency is a British non-departmental public body of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and an Assembly Government Sponsored Body of the Welsh Assembly Government that serves England and Wales.-Purpose:...

 action against executives of the asbestos company Grace (2005). Global civil society, making innovatory use of modern information technology, has been central to this social movement
Social movement
Social movements are a type of group action. They are large informal groupings of individuals or organizations focused on specific political or social issues, in other words, on carrying out, resisting or undoing a social change....

. Examples are the protests at the meetings of the G8
G8
The Group of Eight is a forum, created by France in 1975, for the governments of seven major economies: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In 1997, the group added Russia, thus becoming the G8...

 leaders and against the American and British leaders responsible for the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Historical context

Traditionally, leaders and other power elite
Power elite
A power elite or The Grand Elite, in political and sociological theory, is a small group of people who control a disproportionate amount of wealth, privilege, and access to decision-making of global consequence. The term was coined by C...

s have not seen themselves accountable
Accountability
Accountability is a concept in ethics and governance with several meanings. It is often used synonymously with such concepts as responsibility, answerability, blameworthiness, liability, and other terms associated with the expectation of account-giving...

 as individuals. They were either above the law, as sovereign -- rex non potest peccare ("the King can do no wrong") -- or they had immunity
Sovereign immunity
Sovereign immunity, or crown immunity, is a legal doctrine by which the sovereign or state cannot commit a legal wrong and is immune from civil suit or criminal prosecution....

 just because they were leaders (immunity rationae materiae). Alternatively, they were considered mere representatives of a state
Sovereign state
A sovereign state, or simply, state, is a state with a defined territory on which it exercises internal and external sovereignty, a permanent population, a government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other sovereign states. It is also normally understood to be a state which is neither...

 or organization which, it was believed, carried the responsibility
Moral responsibility
Moral responsibility usually refers to the idea that a person has moral obligations in certain situations. Disobeying moral obligations, then, becomes grounds for justified punishment. Deciding what justifies punishment, if anything, is a principle concern of ethics.People who have moral...

 for any wrongdoings. Writing in 1915, historian R. Michels was not optimistic about change:
"Historical evolution mocks all the prophylactic measures that have been adopted for the prevention of oligarchy. If laws are passed to control the dominion of the leaders, it is the laws which gradually weaken, and not the leaders."

But the globalization of personal accountability is now catching up with the globalization of personal power. Names such as Milošević
Slobodan Milošević
Slobodan Milošević was President of Serbia and Yugoslavia. He served as the President of Socialist Republic of Serbia and Republic of Serbia from 1989 until 1997 in three terms and as President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1997 to 2000...

, Estrada
Joseph Estrada
Joseph "Erap" Ejercito Estrada was the 13th President of the Philippines, serving from 1998 until 2001. Estrada was the first person in the Post-EDSA era to be elected both to the presidency and vice-presidency.Estrada gained popularity as a film actor, playing the lead role in over 100 films in...

, Cheng
Cheng
Cheng can be a transcription of one of several Chinese surnames. Since the syllable Cheng represents different sounds in Hanyu pinyin and the Wade-Giles systems of Chinese romanization, some ambiguity will exist as to which sound is represented by the letters "Cheng" if the romanisation and tone...

, Pinochet
Augusto Pinochet
Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte, more commonly known as Augusto Pinochet , was a Chilean army general and dictator who assumed power in a coup d'état on 11 September 1973...

, Fujimori
Alberto Fujimori
Alberto Fujimori Fujimori served as President of Peru from 28 July 1990 to 17 November 2000. A controversial figure, Fujimori has been credited with the creation of Fujimorism, uprooting terrorism in Peru and restoring its macroeconomic stability, though his methods have drawn charges of...

, Berlusconi
Silvio Berlusconi
Silvio Berlusconi , also known as Il Cavaliere – from knighthood to the Order of Merit for Labour which he received in 1977 – is an Italian politician and businessman who served three terms as Prime Minister of Italy, from 1994 to 1995, 2001 to 2006, and 2008 to 2011. Berlusconi is also the...

, Enron
Enron
Enron Corporation was an American energy, commodities, and services company based in Houston, Texas. Before its bankruptcy on December 2, 2001, Enron employed approximately 22,000 staff and was one of the world's leading electricity, natural gas, communications, and pulp and paper companies, with...

, Union Carbide
Union Carbide
Union Carbide Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Company. It currently employs more than 2,400 people. Union Carbide primarily produces chemicals and polymers that undergo one or more further conversions by customers before reaching consumers. Some are high-volume...

, and Grace have been brought into the accountability frame, as were Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets...

, Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...

, George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....

, and Tony Blair
Tony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...

. Violence surrounding the 9/11 attacks on America represented "retributive accountability" by all parties; but this "global feuding" does not follow the traditional retributive ethic of an "eye for an eye" and is, therefore, uniquely problematic.

Implications of the movement

It is likely that "direct democratic accountability" -- ongoing daily questioning through media, correspondence, courts, and peer networks -- will soon parallel voting systems as a means to address the abuse of power by elites.

A Global Leadership Responsibility Index (GLRI) can assess leadership conduct by using indicators such as ratification of international agreements, aggressive intervention in other countries, perceptions of corruption, and ecological footprint
Ecological footprint
The ecological footprint is a measure of human demand on the Earth's ecosystems. It is a standardized measure of demand for natural capital that may be contrasted with the planet's ecological capacity to regenerate. It represents the amount of biologically productive land and sea area necessary to...

. America comes below China, Japan, and South Korea, and the Index proposes that leadership in smaller countries is more responsible than in large states.

Further reading

  • Leadership accountability in a globalizing world, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, Williams, Christopher.

  • Leaders of integrity: ethics and a code for global leadership, Amman: UN University Leadership Academy, 2001, Williams, Christopher.

  • The prosecution of former military leaders in newly democratic nations, London: McFarland & Co., Roehrig, T.

  • Declaration of Basic Principles of Justice for Victims of Crime and Abuse of Power - Adopted by General Assembly resolution 40/34 of 29 November 1985. See UNHCHR home page.

  • The Allure of Toxic Leaders: Why We Follow Destructive Bosses and Corrupt Politicians -- and How We Can Survive Them Oxford University Press, 2004, Blumen-Lippman, Jean.

  • Understanding Ethical Failures in Leadership (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Public Policy), Cambridge University Press, 2005, Price, Terry L.
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