“Public enemy number one”. This was the title of the first slide of political science professor Donald Kettls keynote speech at the IRSPM public management conference in Copenhagen today. The public enemy in question was Sir Fred Goodwin, former head of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), and target of public outrage since he decided to keep his pension in spite of the bank’s receiving £45 billion in public bail-out money.
- Broken window at former RBS head Fred Goodwin’s home: Public outrage manifesting the new shape of accountability?
RBS is but one of a string of private companies that are now owned partly or fully by government. That puts many companies into the type of public scrutiny that government is used to – and these days, many of them don’t look too pretty in the eyes of the masses. So, while government has been increasingly privatized, private companies are now being governmentalized. The key question then is: If the boundary between public and private is blurring, what is accountability in the post-financial crisis world? Kettl’s short answer was: We don’t know. He then offered several ways forward, only to conclude again: We don’t really know.
One interesting approach, though, is the Obama governments’ pledge to show citizens exactly how the US financial stimulus package is being spent, thus cutting through the accountability issue by aiming at full transparency. At the website www.recovery.gov it is in principle going to be possible to trace every federal dollar spent. According to Donald Kettl, the Obama administration has even considered using Google Earth to allow citizens to see how the government spending trickles all the way down to their neighbourhood.
One pattern that emerged from Kettls tour de force of the future of accountability became strikingly clear, however: Government action seems to be directed at eliminating or at least heavily minimizing risk. Through government interventions around the globe to curb the financial crisis, administrators are trying to shape a new public order which is, if not risk-free, then at least risk-averse. Citizens and businesses should never again be so vulnerable to the whims of financial markets and economic forces. Government should be our friend in times of crisis (and prevent crises from recurring). Such a new order will, however, require a much deeper understanding of risk by government administrators. And even if we upgrade our risk management skills considerably, the risk-free society is likely to be impossible to attain. Because, with Kettls words: “We only know what we want after we see what we get”. In today’s complex world order, we may not know what the risk was before it’s too late. Perhaps the post-financial crisis world will look quite similar to the old one, after all?
- Easter sunlight hits participants at the IRSPM conference in Copenhagen
