Comment: Blindness, Shuttles and Expectations

When you listen to This American Life’s current episode (or podcast) titled “Batman,” you might come away with the impression it is first and foremost about blindness -- or what it means to be blind in our society. Considered as such, the episode is about the social construction of blindness -- and in that sense it is well worth the listen. But as I listened, what seems more significant was the more encompassing theme of the podcast, for it was primarily about the role expectations play in our lives. Which leads to the reason for this post, for I have a long-standing obsession with expectations.
In 1987, I co-authored an often-cited article on the tragic decision to launch the Challenger shuttle that provided a framework highlighting the role various forms of accountability pressures had on the decision-makers, The article drew some attention in and out of academe, and for many years whenever NASA’s shuttle program was in the news (especially after the Columbia disaster) I would get requests from journalists and others to talk about the US space program. Each time I would pass up the opportunity to comment, explaining that the 1987 article was not about NASA or the shuttle program, but instead about the dynamics of making decisions under conditions involving multiple, diverse and (often) conflicting expectations (what I now call the MDCE condition). If they had not hung up on me by then, I’d go on to explain that accountability systems or mechanisms are really responses to the need to manage expectations, and that we need to see the work of government from that perspective. As far as NASA is concerned, I’d suggest that they call someone else.

As the TAL episode points out, there is plenty of expectations-related research in the fields of psychology and sociology, and in recent years expectations have come under the scrutiny of neuroscientists. This substantial -- and growing -- body of empirically-based work increasingly points to fundamental role expectations play in our lives, and it has reinforced my view that there is more to accountability than just the effort to manage expectations -- that is, the development and use of various mechanisms explicitly designed to hold individual accountable. Those “mechanisms” have been focus of much accountability research in the fields of governance and public administration, and while that work is important, I think it misses the mark by focusing on the explicit and superficial forms of accountability while ignoring its role as part of the DNA of governance relationships. It’s with that in mind that I have been working on developing an
ethical theory of accountability (also here) -- one rooted in the idea that being accountable and relating to the perceived expectations of others (that is, assuming the “second person standpoint” of Stephen Darwall) is the essential fact of social (and therefor) political life.

Driving this project is the idea that while we have empirical evidence and frameworks to support our basic contentions regarding expectations and accountability, we lack a viable theory that can be the basis for a greater understanding of their role in governance and other social relationships. Such a theory would not be a new or distinctive construct. Following Darwall,
I have made the argument (also here) that Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments presents a basic ethical theory of accountability. So for me it is not a matter of starting from scratch, but rather reconstructing Smith’s “moral theory” into a theory of governance.

At least that is what I
expect to do.







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