Abstract
In the context of growing concerns about the aftermath of the ‘Arab Spring’, which began in 2010 and ongoing unrest in North Africa, the continuing turmoil in Afghanistan, and increasingly bloody conflict in the Gaza Strip, both scholarly and political circles are involved in fervid debates surrounding the role (and impact) of democratic ideals in international politics, public policy, and examination and interpretation of political history. Despite the widespread attention to such subject matter, less consideration has been given to how democracies manage blame and why the democratic ideal of accountability is so rarely realized. Neil James Mitchell’s book Democracy’s Blameless Leaders: From Dresden to Abu Ghraib, How Leaders Evade Accountability for Abuse, Atrocity, and Killing thus serves as a timely and thoughtful reflection on the actions (and inactions) taken by democratic leaders in cases of human rights violations, as well as the mechanisms undergirding their decisions.
In the first section of the book, the author lays out the cornerstones of his theoretical argument (the larger goal of which is to understand the mechanisms by which leaders – usually successfully – evade accountability), which includes several distinguishable components. The first of these is the gravitational theory of accountability (also referred to as the ‘theory of the fall guy’). According to the author, democratic folklore has things upside down: the buck stops not at those in the highest positions of hierarchical institutions, but is shifted to those in the lower echelons. Put simply, in moments of crisis, blame falls to the bottom of the chain of command, and the distinction between whether a leader ‘can’t control’ or ‘won’t control’ their agents is blurred. In the former instance, violence is initiated by individual agents, whereas in the second, violence is initiated by both agents and leaders, yet leaders attribute blame to ‘bad apples’. Mitchell notes that three underlying motives for violations determine the ways in which blame is attributed: Machiavelli’s motive (i.e. to get and secure power), the Inquisitor’s motive (i.e. to punish those on the wrong side of a political argument), and the selfish motive, in which an individual agent brings their own polemical threats to the encounter (p. 13). In practice, this gravitational process is facilitated by unreliable testimony of military personnel, ‘memory loss’ when asked to account for specific incidents, and inability to coordinate or locate documentary evidence.
The second component of Mitchell’s argument is an extensive discussion of evasion strategies. Using empirical evidence from six major instances of atrocity impacting civilians, the author describes the techniques democratic leaders use to evade accountability for such violations, arguing that they behave in convenient rather than honorable ways. This argument challenges the conventional wisdom that leaders adhere to democratic ideals regardless of circumstance. The four evasion strategies the author outlines include denial, delay, diversion, and delegation. Denial of atrocities can include denying the action, the existence of the victims, or the status of those killed as victims. Delay is a strategy used once the news is already out, with the hope that other events will distract negative attention. Diversion tactics include reminding others that things are equally bad or worse elsewhere, and that everyone gets their hands dirty when fighting wars or repressing conflicts. Finally, the delegation strategy proves to be the most theoretically interesting of the four, relying on either the actual or assumed breakdown of hierarchical systems of responsibility, the distinction between can’t control and won’t control leaders, and the aforementioned ‘bad apples’ claim.
The cases the author considers span from the early 20th century (the Amritsar Massacre) to the early 21st century (atrocities in Iraq committed by US and British militaries). The other cases examined include Dresden, Londonderry, and Beirut, chosen because of their blatant violations of norms against killing and abusing civilians and for their diversity in form. For each case, the author describes the event, discusses the motives for the violations in question, examines the techniques of evasion utilized, and considers the consequences. In Amritsar, for instance, the mass killing of civilians was linked to a small group of soldiers led by a misguided general; in Dresden, by contrast, civilian killing was government policy. However, in each instance, the democratic leader responsible (Winston Churchill, at the time) let subordinates bear the brunt and only admitted to the ‘frightfulness’ of the events once he realized the reputational impact of his choices.
The final elements that give shape to the author’s claims are the ‘agent confidence factor’ (which entails leaders’ protection of their agents) and leaders’ motives for evading blame. With reference to this factor, the author holds that there are two components to a leader’s perceived self-interest: a personal component and a governance component. In the second component, ‘leaders seek to avoid blame for their agents for fear that accepting blame might weaken commitment to the task’ (p. 23). Hence, recognizing the importance of maintaining the ‘agent confidence factor’ is critical in understanding failures in accountability. With reference to the evasion of blame, Mitchell notes that leaders ‘are likely to equate the example of punishment with their own exoneration, as if the load of blame is finite and of a zero-sum character’ (p. 25), further explaining why accountability in the form of punishing those responsible is so rare.
In a rather ambivalent conclusion, the author wonders whether the forces of the voting majority or of a democratic leader will be more effective in opposing the gravitational logic with which he is concerned. Mitchell goes on to contend that it is unrealistic to expect better leaders, as well as to expect institutions to keep leaders in line, given the paucity of evidence of learning from past mistakes and the seemingly innate human predispositions both to transfer guilt and demonstrate obedience in instances of human rights violations. Regardless, he sees the adherence to core values of democracy and an engaged voting audience as the only means to a functioning system of accountability.
Overall, the author’s theoretical argument was clearly laid out, and the evasion techniques distinguished dovetailed well with the evidence at hand, although at times the writing style seemed awkward and slightly disjointed. This is likely due to the challenging task of juggling dense anecdotal detail with broader, and more abstract, statements about the role of democratic ideals in public policy and complex processes such as blame management.
What is noticeably lacking throughout Mitchell’s discussion of numerous cases of abuse is an adequate account of the sociological and cultural factors at play. This becomes especially apparent in discussions of the atrocities in Iraq. For example, acknowledging the role of colonial, racial, and cultural legacies that provide the backdrop for the military’s presence and intervention in the presented cases would have been theoretically fruitful. In a similar vein, in many of the case examples, the crucial element of language used in policy and press pronouncements was something that begged deeper theoretical investigation. As Foucault (1978) noted, discourse is deeply tied to the exercise, transmission, exposition, and thwarting of power. This is particularly salient in the discussion of Abu Ghraib and the noticeable absence of the word ‘torture’ in any media accounts, yet the author does not devote theoretical attention to these aspects.
Another issue concerns the lack of definitional clarity. Although the author notes several features of a working, mature democracy and distinguishes between parliamentary and presidential systems, there is little explicit discussion of how democracy is conceptualized in the context of his argument, or mention of necessary conditions for defining a system or particular action as ‘democratic’. In addition, the author seems to hold that responsibility toward upholding democratic ideals should fall to the polity, leaving the door open as to what the responsibilities of the military, legal, and cultural institutions should be in this regard.
Despite these slight drawbacks, there are considerable strengths to the book. For instance, Mitchell manages to address not only what should reduce the likelihood of violations in the first place, but explains how and why events unfold in line with the goal of ‘blame management’ after violations occur. Importantly, in this discussion, the author differentiates between leaders taking responsibility and offering notional responsibility, exemplified by the ‘man-at-the-top-not-man-at-fault’ style (p. 189) once atrocities have been publicized. Furthermore, his case-selection criteria were comprehensive and served as poignant illustrations of broader theoretical claims.
Mitchell’s incisive and compelling account of how atrocities are handled by ‘working’ democracies provides a promising foundation for how stronger and more efficient systems of accountability might be implemented. Indeed, a fuller understanding of the connections between individual actions, national policies, and international law provided by this book can only sharpen the skills of policymakers, members of the bureaucracy, and members of the public to recognize when and how the management of blame is being exercised and take steps to ameliorate it. Rather than banking on the fact that the rule of law will hold people in line, we should be wary of the pervasiveness of gravitational logic in guiding leaders’ and institutions’ actions in times of crisis.