| Chapter 1: | The Domestic Analogy |
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dismiss them is viewed by such scholars as beside the point: it ignores the real problem, they believe, which is the corruption and abuse of power in international politics. The notion of accountability, in particular, is regarded as a stumbling block. If conditions are to be improved, the argument goes, political scientists must not insist always and everywhere upon the right of voters to dismiss their leaders when they wish it. People must rethink the concept of accountability to make world politics more clean and transparent.
I have two main purposes in writing this book. The first is to take issue with how the concept of accountability today is being revised within political science in general and within the subfield of international relations in particular. I reject the view, which is becoming more and more common, that achieving democratic governance at the level of the planet is impossible. I am concerned with the perception that attempts made in such a direction are fated to have an impact contrary to the one intended, such that the analogy with the nation-state must be abandoned:
If we are to work effectively to improve accountability in world politics, we need to abandon the domestic analogy: the belief that meaningful accountability has to be democratic, entailing popular elections.8
When Robert Keohane argued in this fashion, it was exactly the abuse of power in world politics he was seeking to prevent. He urged citizens of the world to take a stand here and now: to fight corruption, nepotism, and other evils. Keohane, together with Ruth Grant, accordingly have called, as have many of their prominent colleagues, for “new, pragmatic approaches.” Electoral accountability, they argued, is unrealistic at the global level; in point of fact, it would afford no effective way to hold world leaders accountable to the people:
Programs to institute democratic accountability at the global level on the basis of an analogy with domestic democracy founder on the absence of a coherent and well-defined global public.9