08/05/2013
Delegation, accountability and
democracy: the case of human
rights violations
Professor Neil Mitchell
University College London
Outline
•  An understudied research question
–  who is accountable for human rights violations?
•  A theme
–  the analysis of delegation offers a useful approach
•  Four parts
1. The 3 motives for violations
2. Can’t control/won’t control
3.  Evidence and case illustrations
4. Policy/theoretical implications
Standard model of human rights violations
–  GNP per capita*
–  Trade*
–  Democracy*
–  Military Regimes
–  Left Regimes
–  British Colonialism
–  Warfare*
–  Population*
(Mitchell and McCormick World Politics 1988; Poe and Tate,
American Political Science Review 1994)
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Leaders’ motives
Agents’ motives
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Henry V and vain command
What is’t to me, when you yourselves are cause,
If your pure maidens fall into the hand
Of hot and forcing violation?
What rein can hold licentious wickedness
When down the hill he holds his fierce career?
We may as bootless spend our vain command
Upon th’enraged soldiers in their spoil
As send precepts to the leviathan
To come ashore. Therefore, you men of Harfleur,
Take pity of your town and of your people
Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command
The siege of Magdeburg 1631
Even a more humane general would in vain have recommended
mercy to such soldiers; but Tilly never made the attempt … Here
commenced a scene of horrors for which history has no language,
poetry no pencil. Neither innocent childhood, nor helpless old age;
neither youth, sex, rank, nor beauty could disarm the fury of the
conquerors ….The Croats amused themselves with throwing
children into the flames; Pappenheim’s Walloons with stabbing
infants at the mother’s breast. Some officers of the League,
horror-struck at this dreadful scene, ventured to remind Tilly that he
had it in his power to stop the carnage. ‘Return in an hour,’ was
his answer; ‘I will see what I can do; the soldier must have some
reward for his dangers and toils.’[my italics]
Schiller,History of Thirty Years War,178/9
Economists: simple agency problem and
can’t control
•  A. Principals and agents have conflicting goals.
Principals want work. Agents seek to shirk.
•  B. Principals seek to overcome information
asymmetry in order to maintain control.
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Complex agency relationship and won’t
control
•  C. Contrary to expectation A, goal variance
between principal and agent means different but
not necessarily conflicting goals.
•  D. Contrary to expectation B, there may be no
information asymmetry. The principal has access
to information about the agent’s goals and
character.
Carey, Mitchell, and Lowe JPR
2013
http://www.sowi.uni-mannheim.de/
militias-public
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0
Percentages within each CIRI level
20
40
60
80
PGMs and human rights violations (Mitchell, Carey, and Butler 2012)
0
1
2
3
Informal PGMs
4
5
6
7
Semi-official PGMs
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Both PGM Types
The agent’s contribution
(Bohara, Mitchell, Nepal and Raheem 2008)
3
1
2
Torture
4
5
Figure 1: Torture and Corruption
0
2
4
Corruption Index
(mean) torture
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Fitted values
Adhikari, Hansen, Mitchell and Proctor, Violence hotspots and Village Defence Forces
in the Nepal Conflict ISA San Francisco 5/4/2013
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Who is accountable - do democracies deliver
accountability?
•  Politicians say they do:
‘Because America is committed to the equality
and dignity of all people, there will be a full
accounting for the cruel and disgraceful abuse of
Iraqi detainees. . . . One basic difference between
democracies and dictatorships is that free
countries confront such abuses openly and
directly’ (President Bush 10 May 2004).
Do democracies deliver accountability?
•  Commanders say they do:
‘it is absolutely bedrock to the British army's
philosophy that a commanding officer is
responsible for what goes on within his
command’ (General Sir Mike Jackson at the Baha
Mousa Inquiry).
Do democracies deliver accountability?
•  Scholars assume they do:
•  ‘A crucial feature of representative democracy
is that those who govern are held accountable
to the governed’ (Grant and Keohane APSR 2005, 29)
•  ‘a democratic process is a pragmatic way to
ensure that modern leaders enter their position
with a firm claim of legitimacy and can be held
accountable once they get there’(J S. Nye Jr., The
Powers to Lead 2008, 122).
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The gravitational theory of accountability
•  Blame falls to the bottom – to the fall guy
The agent confidence factor
‘The soldan of Egypt or the emperor of Rome might
drive his harmless subjects like brute beasts against
their sentiments and inclination. But he must, at
least, have led his mamalukes or praetorian bands,
like men, by their opinion.’ (Hume, Of the First Principles of
Government)
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Gravitational theory of accountability
•  Unlikely to get an accurate account
•  Unlikely to get punishment except at lowest
plausible level.
•  Unlikely to get harsh punishment except where
clear goal variance
Can’t Control in Londonderry: Blame falls to the bottom
Can’t control in Beirut
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Beirut September 16-18, 1982: No blame at
the top
‘Rafael Eitan . . . who had lied to dozens of world
newsmen when asked if Israel had sent the
Phalangists in, was allowed to finish his tour of duty
with dignity and was then elected to the Israeli
parliament. Brigadier General Yaron . . . promoted to
major general. . . . An investigation which results in
such ‘punishments’ is not an investigation that can
be taken seriously.’
Thomas Friedman From Beirut to Jerusalem.
Can’t control in Baghdad: Legal accountability at the bottom
Rumsfeld: ‘people have been
punished and convicted in a
court-martial. So the idea that
there’s any policy of abuse or
policy of torture is false. Flat
false’
US Senate Armed Services
Committee (2008): ‘Attempts
by senior officials to portray
[the bad apples scenario] to be
the case while shrugging off
any responsibility for abuses
are both unconscionable and
false’
UK in Iraq:
Courts criticise MoD:
“lamentable behaviour
and serious breaches of
its duty of candour over
the failure to disclose
crucial information about
allegations of murder
and ill-treatment by
British soldiers in Iraq in
2004” (Norton-Taylor,
Guardian 2/10/09, 1).
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No dilemma for
military
prisoners
British Army’s Aitken
Report (2008, 24):
‘[need] to educate our
people to understand
that lying to the Service
Police, or having
selective memory loss
in court, in order to
protect other members
of their unit, are not
forms of loyalty, but
rather a lack of
integrity’
Limits of the analysis
•  Challenge evidence base
•  Challenge concept of accountability
‘If Madison were alive today … he would discover a
harmonious system of mutual frustration
undergirding a surprising national consensus – a
consensus always fruitfully under pressure from
various quarters – about the proper scope of the
President’s counterterrorism authorities. And then
the father of the Constitution would smile.’
Jack Goldsmith, Power and Constraint: The Accountable
Presidency after 9/11NY: Norton & Co. 2012 (Headed Office of
Legal Counsel for Bush Admin)
‘and they are fortunate who get a theatre
where the audience demands their best.’
‘if the public, the mainspring of the whole checking
machinery, are too ignorant, too passive, or too careless and
inattentive to do their part, little benefit will be derived from
the best administrative apparatus . . . Publicity, for instance,
is no impediment to evil, nor stimulus to good, if the public
will not look at what is done.’
J.S. Mill, Considerations on Representative Government, p.
27
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Concluding points
•
•
•
•
•
Accountability is an aspiration
Plain English
Pay attention to fire-alarm sounding media
Core values
Prudence in the commitment of troops or aligning
with militias
and theory
• Focus on the actors, and the relationships between
them
• An adapted p-a model
• Not a theory of everything …
Professor Hank Jenkins-Smith, University of
Oklahoma
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