Megaphone Bureaucracy by Grube Dennis C.;

Author:Grube, Dennis C.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2019-02-08T16:00:00+00:00

The Dramaturgy of Accountability

The three case studies demonstrate that there is a wide spectrum of current practice in the questioning of officials by oversight committees and in subsequent press coverage. In the Australian case, questioning centred on what ministers knew and when and how they responded to unfolding events. Questioning of public service witnesses—whilst leading to some tense exchanges—focused on identifying which ministers could or should be held politically responsible for mistakes. There was little direct criticism of public service processes as opposed to political outcomes. The Australian media largely reflected that focus in its reporting. Public servants were not directly blamed or held accountable, and their evidence was utilised only in so far as it helped to shed light on questions of ministerial responsibility.

By contrast, in the United Kingdom case the focus of questioning was squarely on administrative structures and processes and how they contributed to the failure of the tender process. Civil servants were publicly upbraided by MPs on the PAC, with little mention of their ministerial masters. Press reporting followed the committee’s lead. Criticisms—clear, sharp and personal—were levelled at the Transport Department and its bureaucratic leadership. There was also some focus on how a further repetition of such mistakes in the future could be avoided. It was—at both the PAC and the media level—an exercise in administrative rather than political accountability.

Similarly in the United States case, in the very different institutional setting of a congressional oversight committee, the focus was on the leadership skills of the public executives being questioned. Specifically, Michele Leonhart was put under the spotlight of sustained and direct criticism, of the way that she was leading her organisation, and for her alleged failures to appropriately discipline DEA agents. It is hard to imagine a parallel in a Westminster committee where individual civil servants would be held so directly and aggressively accountable—although the West Coast Rail case comes close in some aspects. The true extent of Leonhart’s accountability was demonstrated by her subsequent swift retirement—taking personal responsibility for the wider failings of her organisation in a way that a minister would in theory (although seldom in practice) be expected to do under Westminster conventions.

There are of course a number of variables that could be contributing to practice here. In the United Kingdom, the PAC is a committee with a long tradition of fierce and largely non-partisan scrutiny of government departments. It is known for going after bureaucrats and ministers in a piercing fashion. In Australia, the Senate committee hearings into the roof insulation scheme were instituted in an election year, against the background of an opposition narrative criticising the government for alleged waste and undue haste in the implementation of its fiscal stimulus measures. It was an environment in which fierce partisan disagreement over the home insulation programme dominated political debate. The cost in terms of lives lost and money allegedly misspent had already been heavily covered in the media before the committee’s investigation, setting the context for the committee to seek to attribute political blame for these failures.

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