“What Will You Tell Them When They Ask You?” Reflexive Accountability in a Democratic Regime

Abstract

In a democracy, ordinary citizens enjoy formal unaccountability, a condition that characterized classical Athens and that persists in a modified form in modern representative democracies. Popular unaccountability is both constitutive of democratic rule and inherently risky: Will citizens vote responsibly, and what might encourage them to do so? This article returns to classical Athens to analyze a paradigmatic scene of democratic politics whose dynamics remain relevant today: Elite orators addressing large, empowered, and formally unaccountable audiences. As the Athenian case indicates, democratic plurality, answerability, and intersubjective identity together create the conditions for what I call “reflexive accountability.” “Reflexive accountability” refers to citizens endeavoring to hold themselves accountable to those on behalf of whom, or in whose interest, they are expected to make political decisions. Political orators addressing empowered audiences initiate reflexive accountability when they ask citizens to imagine what they will say when other citizens, neighbors, or family members ask them how they voted and why. Reflexive accountability, as a distinctly democratic form of accountability and as a democratic ideal, is a litmus test for a healthy democratic regime, one in which citizens are encouraged to hold in mind those who will be affected by their actions and to take seriously another’s claim to a persuasive account of the soundness and justice of their vote.