Passing the Buck

How politicians became addicted to "accountability sinks"

I’m sure we’ve all had the experience of phoning a customer helpline to try and get a refund or rearrange a booking and had a conversation along these lines (usually after 20 minutes of “your call is very important to us”):

“I’d like a refund please”

“I’m afraid I’m not authorised to do that”

“Who is authorised?”

“My team manager”

“Well can I can talk to your manager then?”

“I’m afraid I’m not authorised to do that”

At which point you can either start yelling at the hapless person on the phone, who is only telling the truth, which will merely add feelings of guilt at mistreating them to your wider sense of frustration. Or you can give up.

When this happens you’re encountering an “accountability sink” – a term coined by the writer Dan Davies and discussed in his excellent new book “The Unaccountability Machine” (he also has a substack). The crucial property of an accountability sink is a set of rules that mean no individual can be blamed for a decision. In the customer service example, the person on the helpdesk is genuinely blameless and the person who could theoretically help you is entirely inaccessible.

As Davies says:

“For an accountability sink to function, it has to break a link; it has to prevent the feedback of the person affected by the decision from affecting the operation of the system….If somebody can override the accountability sink and overrule a policy that is in danger of generating a ridiculous or disgusting outcome, then that person is potentially accountable for that outcome.” (My italics)

One you’ve understood the concept you start seeing them everywhere – a source of so many of the petty frustrations of modern life. The NHS is a sea of accountability sinks. Your MRI got randomly cancelled? “I’m afraid that’s our new booking system that no one here can override”. You can get an emergency same day appointment at your GP or one in four weeks but not one in two days when convenient? “I’m afraid that’s the way the system is set up”.

As Davies explains the fundamental reason for their creation is not that it’s good business practice, after all the customer goes away unhappy and may use a competitor next time, but that:

“being held accountable for things is horrible…Having your decisions questioned, and having pressure placed on you to change them – which…is the essence of accountability – is humiliating and unpleasant. Not only that, but in large organisations, the kind of conflict that’s implicit in a system where individuals make decisions is potentially corrosive of trust and relationships.”

In other words accountability sinks are a mechanism to makes the lives of people in authority easier. He gives the example of academic publishing, an absurd system in which professors provide papers for free to private companies that are then sold back to their institutions for vast profits. Why do universities cooperate with this patent nonsense? Because it avoids anyone in management positions having to make judgments – and be held accountable – for assessing the quality of their colleagues’ scholarship when considering promotions. Citation counts are a very handy accountability sink, which no one can be blamed for.

Politics and accountability sinks

Politicians have, of course, always engaged in buck passing. Read about any military disaster in modern European history and they’ll be stories of feverish blame avoidance (the briefings and counter-briefings over Gallipoli being one of the most spectacular examples).

But generally speaking political accountability used to be a more sedate affair. Right up to the late 1980s there were no TV cameras in Parliament. Ministers could speak in an environment of greater safety to a usually empty chamber, given many MPs had second jobs back then. Outside of Parliament, TV and radio interviews were a much easier ride. Until the 1980s broadcast media tended to extreme deference. And right up to the early 2010s politicians could make decisions without being bombarded with immediate real time criticism and abuse on social media.

More thorough and speedy accountability has many benefits but it’s also, well, “humiliating and unpleasant”.