Responsibility

Fundamental concepts

Historical survey

Types of responsibility and control

Obedience and responsibility

BIBLIOGRAPHY

As a philosophical concept, responsibility is a correlate of freedom; as a political concept, it is a correlate of constitutionalism. Philosophically, the opposite of responsibility is external or internal compulsion; in political terms, it is arbitrariness.

It is necessary to distinguish between moral, political, and legal responsibility. Moral responsibility may be related only to consciousness; its extreme expression is Dostoevski’s statement: “Everybody is guilty of everything.” A clear example of such responsibility is the Stuttgart Declaration of the Evangelical church in Germany. Although no one blamed it for its attitude under the Nazi regime, the church made the following statement: “During long years we fought in the name of Jesus Christ against the devilish spirit of which the terrorist regime of National Socialism was a terrible expression. Nevertheless we accuse ourselves that we did not confess more bravely, pray more faithfully, believe more joyfully, love more intensely.” Moral responsibility may also have an objective dimension. According to John Stuart Mill, “A government is to be judged by its action upon men, and by its action upon things; by what it makes of the citizens, and what it does with them; its tendency to improve or deteriorate the people themselves, and the goodness or badness of the work it performs for them, and by means of them” ([1861] 1958, p. 28). Here moral and political responsibility are linked.

Political responsibility is more rigid than moral responsibility because it is judged by results and not by intentions. Political responsibility means the right use of power. It is relevant to both the tiny fragment of power in the hands of a single voter and the unlimited power of the dictator.

Legal responsibility is a fragile instrument of control because legislators and judges can easily misuse their political power by making laws and decisions weighted against political opponents. The ancient use of impeachment suggests how easily politics can be turned into law and law into politics.

The classic political expression of responsibility is found in Constant’s De la responsabilité des ministres (1815). Although Constant’s reasons for writing this book are now only of historical interest (the solemn impeachment power of parliament in cases of treason and embezzlement), he did develop three thoughts that still have fundamental meaning: (1) He replaced the notions of treason and embezzlement by the more general term “misuse of power.” (2) He declared that in a constitutional monarchy a vote of no confidence by parliament must inevitably lead to the resignation of ministers. (3) He asserted the coresponsibility of lower executive officials who obey illegal orders.

Fundamental concepts

The three statements above foreshadow the four main categories used in this article in the analysis of responsibility.

Who is responsible?

Every member of the body politic is responsible according to his function, from the absolute ruler to the common voter. There are specific forms of political and legal responsibility attached to specific functions, e.g., to those of ministers and officials in constitutional states.

How far does responsibility extend?

In the framework of a bureaucratic hierarchy, responsibility can be determined according to duties. The minister is responsible for his department, the

mayor for his city, the official for his office. The lower the position, the easier it is to define the limits of responsibility; until, at the lowest level, responsibility is limited to the execution of orders and directions. The higher the level of government, the harder it is to distinguish between the execution of laws and the exercise of discretion. In the jurisdiction of the German administrative courts the question of discretion is of great importance. After the excesses of administrative arbitrariness under National Socialism, an attempt was made to keep the field of discretion as narrow as possible. However, some discretion is necessary because efficient administration requires that each case be treated individually. Political responsibility in the broadest sense means responsibility to the public interest. The highest authorities—the sovereign people, the chief of government, the head of the state—are responsible not only for matters within their control but sometimes also for matters beyond their control, such as success or failure in war or in diplomatic negotiations. In former times, kings were held responsible even for starvation and floods. King Frederick the Great dismissed generals who were unsuccessful in battle. Public opinion tends to blame a political leader for not having mastered overwhelming odds. For instance, German political opinion held Chancellor Brüning responsible for the failure of the Weimar Republic.

To whom is a man responsible?

Theoretically, the politician or administrator is responsible to those who gave him the mandate. His responsibility is in the first place to his superior in office and to the competent judge, who act as representatives of the sovereign; then to the sovereign; and finally to God. When the sovereign is the people, its judgment is expressed through public opinion, elections, or special tribunals. Often in primitive societies, the ultimate test of political responsibility is the ordeal.

To which sanctions must the responsible person answer?

Legal penalties are adequate sanctions only if responsibility can be defined in legal terms. The politically responsible person can be dismissed only if he fails or has lost the trust of the person who commissioned him. The classic example is the dismissal of a minister after a vote of no confidence in parliament. Apart from this there are cases in which neither the field of competence nor the form of sanctions is fixed, but punishment is demanded by the disgraced monarch or the indignant people. Under these conditions sanctions may take the form of the “silk string” the despot sends to his vizier, of judgment by revolutionary tribunals, or of punitive measures by victorious enemies.

Historical survey

One can speak of political responsibility only if there is a generally acknowledged standard for judging actions that affect the community; thus, political responsibility presupposes a kind of public interest. The history of political responsibility is simultaneously a history of the interpretation of public interest. In societies where a religious spirit dominates, public interest means adaptation to a divine order.

The emperor of China, for example, had to make certain that his empire found the middle path between heaven and earth. If the empire were permanently struck by misfortune, the emperor was considered to have lost his mandate from heaven; he was no longer a true emperor and could be— even had to be—deposed. Snorri Sturluson told of two Swedish priest-kings who were sacrificed to the gods in order to prevent starvation. A similar feeling for responsibility to fate was behind the Athenian institution of ostrakismos; a person could be banished arbitrarily, without imputation of dishonor, by vote of the majority. This was not meant as punishment for a crime, but merely to prevent some future misfortune that his continued presence might cause.

Medieval Christianity was the first to distinguish between several kinds of responsibility and between different authorities to whom responsibility was due. The church controlled the responsibility of the monarch to God. But it was a twofold responsibility. The prince had to lead a life beyond reproach in order to conform to the old idea that he personally represented the harmony of the political and the cosmic orders. At the same time he bore another responsibility, arising out of his political function: he had to dispense justice. The true nature of justice had to be determined by the public interest, which was conceived of as the best order for all or as a guaranteed order based on valid law. The absolute monarch was responsible only to God. Therefore, he was independent of the church as well as of the privileged estates. The doctrine of the “divine right of kings” included supremacy over the church. In the period of the Enlightenment the king himself separated the office from his person. Like Frederick the Great of Prussia, he thought of himself as the premier serviteur de I’état. The theory of the divine right of kings was upheld, but God was replaced by reason and justice as the recipient of responsibility. The king should be a Staatskänig; his authority was based on the idea of the state, but not necessarily on the consent of the nation.

Further changes in the concept of responsibility were introduced in the period of constitutional and parliamentary monarchies. Indeed, in these two systems the king was not responsible to anyone. In a constitutional monarchy such as Germany the ministers were responsible to parliament only for the legality of their actions. They did not need the confidence of parliament to stay in power; they needed only the confidence of the monarch. In England, a parliamentary monarchy, the ultimate decision on political responsibility rested in society itself, as represented by a full parliamentary convention.

The history of the modern state is also the history of the idea of public interest, proceeding from the privileges of the kings and the estates all the way to the raison d’état of absolutism. In continental Europe the raison d’état was generally embodied in the prince and his administrative and military staffs, and the public interest was represented by a well-ordered administration and well-ordered courts. In England the character of parliament changed; from representing the special interests of the different estates it came to represent the whole nation, and freedom became the standard of public interest.

The principle of popular sovereignty, through either representative or plebiscitarian democracy, has now been accepted all over the world. The constitutions of representative democracies contain a web of responsibility on different levels and a system of corresponding controls. Courts of justice examine whether legislation is within the limits of constitutional law and whether administration is exercised within prescribed bounds. Parliament controls the politics of the cabinet. In the same way it also controls the conduct of every minister responsible for a department. Public opinion controls the political style. Its organs are a free press, corporations of public or private law, and interest groups, spontaneous assemblies, or action groups. There is no immanent contradiction between representative and plebiscitarian democracy. But as soon as the plebiscitarian principle itself becomes an important factor, differentiation of responsibility is no longer possible. For in this case rulers and nation are declared to be identical, and the people itself takes over responsibility. Totalitarian regimes, therefore, often insist on being regularly legitimated by genuine or faked plebiscites.

Types of responsibility and control

A distinction must now be made between the responsibility of a trustee and the responsibility of an agent. [See Representation.] The trustee’s responsibility is personal; the agent’s responsibility is technical. This distinction permits a consistent scheme for the different examples discussed. The leader of the state, whether a single person or a group, acts in the name of the whole body. Leaders can be regarded only as trustees of the whole—in a democratic society, as trustees of the whole nation. On the other hand, people responsible only for clearly circumscribed functions are mere agents. Their responsibility is limited by their instructions, provided that these instructions are in accordance with the constitution. A third and very important group consists of the leaders of the constituent sections or departments of the total power, for instance, members of legislative bodies, supreme courts, ministers as heads of the administration. In some of their duties they can be regarded as agents, but because they are more responsible for the spirit than for the manner of executive power, they are trustees. One might say that they exercise secondary trusteeship. In a democracy the distinction between trustee and agent vanishes. Even agents as a part of the sovereign people are regarded as—and may feel themselves to be— trustees. On the other hand, an authoritarian, and above all a totalitarian, government destroys any sense of trusteeship. This is illustrated by the attitudes of Hitler’s and Stalin’s highest functionaries, who hid behind orders and denied any personal responsibility, claiming to be only agents.

Primary trustees

The sovereign is responsible for the state as a whole. In democracies that responsibility is exercised through elections or plebiscites. There is no appeal against the decisions of the sovereign. It is a mutual responsibility of the people and their representatives; its standard is the spirit of the community. But there are exceptional cases, where responsibility is exercised by self-nominated agents of public opinion. Such exceptions may begin in rather trifling expressions of public uneasiness, as in the Der Spiegel affair in Germany in 1962. They can lead to a total change in the regime, as did I’affaire Dreyfus in France, and ultimately to a violent revolution, such as that caused by the protest of the French press against the royal ordinances in 1830.

The leader of the government, the head of the state, or the prime minister is also responsible for the whole destiny of a nation. He is legally controlled by parliament, by the voters, and indirectly by public opinion. He will be held responsible not only for misconduct, but also for bad policies, and in the last analysis for success or failure. The normal sanction is removal at the next election. Although other methods for removal are available, their utility is doubtful; in the United States, for example, the institution of impeachment has never led to a conviction. The parliamentary committees for investigation, developed above all in German public law, may help to detect corruption, but they have no serious political effects. Decisions by supreme courts, e.g., the very influential Bundesverfassungsgericht (federal constitutional court) in Germany, are useful correctives for legislation and administration, but they do not provide sanctions against irresponsible behavior.

Secondary trustees

The importance of secondary trusteeship depends on the character of the government. It is considerable in a government with collective responsibility; it diminishes as a government approaches monocracy. Even under the same constitution it changes with the personal influence of the head of government and the minister concerned. In England the minister, as head of a department, is regarded as responsible for the conduct of his officials. Parliament will not remove him for minor blunders but probably will for mistakes seriously affecting men or institutions. In most cases the minister will resign quickly to save the government. In the United States the presidential system gives no opportunity to overthrow the government; the responsibilities of the departments and of their chiefs are sometimes not very obvious. So Congress uses other methods to get rid of unpopular officials: refusing to allocate funds, delaying bills, and so on. In the Continental systems the power of the bureaucracy as a semiautonomous body is so great, and is organized in such a way, that the main responsibility lies not with the parliamentary ministers but with the permanent secretaries of state or their equivalents. Here the special administrative courts are important means for compelling the administration to observe the intentions of the legislature.

Agents

The responsibility of agents consists in implementing constitutional provisions, making independent decisions of minor importance, and executing orders given by superiors. In the first two cases, the public is interested in internal control through the bureaucratic hierarchy itself and through administrative courts so that authority is not capriciously misused. The means of internal control are described by Carl J. Friedrich (1937, chapter 19) as (1) disciplinary measures, (2) promotional measures, (3) financial measures, (4) judicial measures, and (5) the spirit of craftsmanship. Friedrich makes the interesting observation that the appeal to esprit de corps is in some respects akin to the appeal to religious responsibility and affects the deepest strata of personality.

Obedience and responsibility

The execution of orders given by superiors can give rise to serious conflicts. The official may be anxious to avoid a wrong policy because, as an expert, he can foresee serious consequences. In such cases the official should, according to Max Weber, “execute conscientiously the order of the superior authorities, exactly as if the order agreed with his own conviction. This holds even if the order appears wrong to him and if, despite the civil servant’s remonstrances, the authority insists on the order” ([1919] 1946, p. 95). Responsibility in these instances is necessarily limited, and the official will resign only when he is convinced that the execution of the order would be dangerous for the state or would dishonor him.

Another source of conflict is the illegality of orders. In this case the official is not allowed to obey. When this occurs in a constitutional regime, it will be solved very quickly by appeals to parliament or by other legal means. The guilty superior will be reprimanded, and the disobedient official will be cleared. In authoritarian or totalitarian states the problem is more difficult. We still see Nazi officials trying to exculpate themselves with the claim of Befehlsnotstand (danger to their lives if they did not obey). Although the constitution and the special laws, and even military law, clearly forbid the execution of illegal orders, the culprits often justify themselves on the ground of imminent danger to their security and life. But personal responsibility must prevail even against obedience to political superiors. It is an important step in the democratic development of a people when the citizen’s responsibility toward law takes precedence over his responsibility toward a superior.

O. H. v. D. Gablentz

[See alsoAuthority; Constitutions And Constitutionalism; Dictatorship; Legitimacy; Totalitarianism.]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The most complete discussion of political responsibility is in Friedrich 1937. For the American point of view, the writings of Niebuhr 1956 and Lippmann 1955 should be consulted. Fauconnet 1920 deals with criminal responsibility in different societies. Many references may be found in “The Quest for Responsibility” in Schubert 1961.

Constant De Rebecque, Henri Benjamin 1815 De la responsabilité des ministres. Paris: Nicolle.

Fauconnet, Paul 1920 La responsabilité: Étude de sociologie. Paris: Alcan.

Fraenkel, Ernst 1958 Die repräsentative und die plebiszitäre Komponente im demokratischen Verfassungsstaat. Tübingen (Germany): Mohr.

Friedrich, Carl J. (1937) 1950 Constitutional Government and Democracy: Theory and Practice in Europe and America. Rev. ed. Boston: Ginn. → Originally published as Constitutional Government and Politics: Nature and Development.

Gablentz, Otto Heinrich Von Der 1959 Politische Gesittung. Cologne (Germany): Westdeutscher Verlag.

Hennis, Wilhelm 1962 Amtsgedanke und Demokratie-begriffe. In Konrad Hesse, Siegfried Reicke, and Ulrich Scheuner (editors), Staatsverfassung und Kirchenordnung: Festgabe für Rudolf Smend zum 80. Geburtstag am 15. Januar 1962. Tübingen (Germany): Mohr.

Leibholz, Gerhard 1958 Strukturprobleme der modernen Demokratie. Karlsruhe (Germany): Müller.

Lippmann, Walter 1955 Essays in the Public Philosophy. Boston: Little.

Meinecke, Friedrich (1924) 1957 Machiavellism: The Doctrine of Raison d’état and Its Place in Modern History. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. → First published as Die Idee der Staatsrason in der neueren Ge-schichte. Contains a general introduction to Friedrich Meinecke’s work by W. Stark.

Mill, John Stuart (1861) 1958 Considerations on Representative Government. New York: Liberal Arts.

Niebuhr, Reinhold 1956 Reinhold Niebuhr, His Religious, Social, and Political Thought. Edited by C. W. Kegley and R. W. Bretall. New York: Macmillan.

Schubert, Glendon A. 1961 The Public Interest: A Critique of the Theory of a Political Concept. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press.

Stahl, Friedrich Julius (1830–1837) 1854–1856 Die Philosophic des Rechts. 2 vols., 3d ed. Tübingen (Germany ): Mohr.

Weber, Max (1919) 1946 Politics as a Vocation. Pages 77–128 in Max Weber, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Translated and edited by H. H. Gerth and C. W. Mills. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.

re·spon·si·bil·i·ty / riˌspänsəˈbilətē/ • n. (pl. -ties) the state or fact of having a duty to deal with something or of having control over someone: women bear children and take responsibility for child care. ∎  the state or fact of being accountable or to blame for something: the group has claimed responsibility for a string of murders. ∎  the opportunity or ability to act independently and make decisions without authorization: we would expect individuals lower down the organization to take on more responsibility. ∎  (often responsibilities) a thing that one is required to do as part of a job, role, or legal obligation: he will take over the responsibilities of overseas director. ∎  [in sing.] (responsibility to/toward) a moral obligation to behave correctly toward or in respect of: individuals have a responsibility to control personal behavior.

responsibility n.
1. the obligation to carry forward an assigned task to a successful conclusion. With responsibility goes authority to direct and take the necessary action to ensure success.

2. the obligation for the proper custody, care, and safekeeping of property or funds entrusted to the possession or supervision of an individual. Compare with accountability.

responsibility (ri-spons-i-bil-iti) n. (in nursing) the state of being answerable for one's performance according to the terms of reference of the Code of Professional Conduct see NMC code of professional conduct: standard, The