Democracy Beyond Elections

Government Accountability in the Media Age

Gergana Dimova

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9783030252939
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030252946
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book provides the analytical framework for understanding the relationship between media scandals, executive accountability and the crisis of democracy. The empirical findings are based on an original database of 6000 media allegations and investigations in Russia, Germany and Bulgaria. Observations gained from the case studies are then placed in relation to a systematic analysis and critique of more than 100 models of the transformation and crisis of democracy. The book will be of particular interest to researchers focusing on democratic theory and political thought, as well as those working empirically in the field of democratic systems.

         

© The Author(s) 2020

G. DimovaDemocracy Beyond ElectionsChallenges to Democracy in the 21st Centuryhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25294-6_1

Begin Abstract

1. Government Accountability in the Media Age: How to Measure, Explain and Assess It?

Gergana Dimova¹

(1)

Department of Applied Social Sciences, Forensics and Politics, University of Winchester, Winchester, UK

Gergana Dimova

Email: [email protected]

Keywords

GovernmentAccountabilityMediaDemocracySupply and demand

End Abstract

Democracy, accountability and the media have a difficult relationship. It is hard to say whether media allegations levelled at government incumbents, and the subsequent investigations and sanctions of these media allegations, benefit or undermine democracy. On the one hand, it is entirely possible that governing elites use media scandals as an opportunity to threaten opponents and deflect attention from unpopular policies. On the other hand, if the allegations are viable, the public benefits when the government offers more explanations, dismisses corrupt officials or reverses controversial policies. Either way, a thorough study of government accountability in the aftermath of scandals could provide an important glimpse into the workings of democracy. The book poses three large queries: How do we know that the process of accountability is compromised? Who benefits from it? Are democracies and non-democracies likely to handle the accountability process differently?

The study of media accusations , the accountability process and democracy is important both because of its prominent place in everyday media discourse and because of its scholarly significance for democratic theory. To begin with, there are too many unexamined presumptions about the influence of media accusations on political life and democracy. Many of them espouse an overly narrow vision of democratic accountability, which only inquires how media allegations affect the dismissals and demotions of politicians (Berlinski et al. 2012). But it is important to highlight the fact that the investigation process that media accusations prompt is just as important as potential dismissals. For example, it is not only instructive whether the allegations surrounding Russia’s interference in the 2016 US elections would lead to president Trump’s impeachment or not but how the investigative mechanisms in between have unfolded.

The book, therefore, brings home the realisation that there are a myriad of phases, dimensions, back doors and windows of opportunities in the accountability process that could tilt, undermine or boost democratic accountability. For instance, it is important who plants the accusations in the media and thus who determines the accountability agenda; it is important who peddles these media charges further into accountability forums ; it is important to gauge the trade-off between the high frequency of legislative investigations and their relative ineffectiveness; it is essential to understand how the incumbents could stonewall the process by verbal deflections; and it is vital to understand how the various accountability forums compete and cooperate. Instead of focusing exclusively on the end result of a possible impeachment, it is essential to keep an eye on the range of intermediate sanctions, such as dismissing low-ranking officials, demoting high-ranking incumbents, policy compromises. Additional lines of inquiry involve the question whether legislative hearings are public or not and how the incumbents use executive privilege and classified information. Only a balanced, comprehensive perspective of this process could provide a convincing account of the link between scandals, government accountability and democracy.

The book lays out the methodological groundwork for approaching situations of government accountability in the aftermath of media allegations. Its focus is broad and it seeks to understand and compare post-media accountability processes across various regimes. It relies on an original database of about 6000 media allegations emerging not only in the Western democracy of Germany but also in the managed democracy of Russia and in the transitional democracy of Bulgaria. Due to its comprehensive focus, its method and concepts are widely applicable beyond these three particular countries. It creates the conceptual framework that could address “signature” scandals, which seem to have the potential to rock and upend political power, such as the Snowden files, Wikileaks, the MP expenses scandal, Spotlight, the Strauss Kahn sexual allegations, Watergate, the Lewinsky scandals and Trump’s allegations that former president Obama had tapped his phones.

The inquiry is also significant because it contributes a fresh perspective to the rigorous discourse about the virtues and ailments of democracy. There is no doubt that the democratic discourse is currently in its most turbulent phase. Pundits are nonplussed about the direction in which democracy is going, and we are bombarded daily by newspaper pronouncements about democracy’s suicide, the anxieties of democracy, democratic failure, democratic malaise and the collapse of the liberal world order. Harvard professor Malt (Walt 2016) is unequivocal: “The world is entering a period where once-robust democracies have grown fragile. Now is the time to figure out where we went wrong”. As a testimony to the rising public and scholarly anxiety, a simple Google search reveals that the words “crisis” and “democracy” produced only 15,000 results in 2000 but skyrocketed to more than 19 million results in 2016.

This grave concern with democracy in the popular media has been matched by an avalanche of scholarly research. I review more than 150 models of the crisis and regeneration of democracy that have emerged since 1997. In very stark terms, this discourse could be framed as an opposition between the pessimistic view of the “disfigurement of democracy” (Urbinati 2014), “audience democracy” (Manin 1997) and “post-democracy” (Crouch 2004) against the more optimistic view of “international democracy” (Archibugi 2008; Held 2004), “deliberative democracy” (Dryzek 2002), “monitory democracy” (Keane 2013) and “counter-democracy” (Rosanvallon 2008). However, the field is incredibly conflicted within itself with opposing causes of the crisis of democracy existing side by side, such as an apathetic versus an overly demanding public, the retrenchment of the state versus the overextension of the state, the rise of technocratic leaders versus the rise of charismatic leaders, the emergence of the superstate versus the de-centralisation of the state. The impression of a congested condition of the democratic literature is vindicated by a laundry list of democratic illnesses, such as terrorism, the economic crisis of 2008, the rise of populism, the distrust of representative institutions, mass immigration and capitalism’s inherent contradictions, to which we have grown almost inured.

The book introduces a new approach that studies democracy through the view of the post-media accountability process. This perspective seeks to drive forward the critical discourse beyond the familiar understandings of the crisis. It produces novel insights, which could be added to the existing conceptions and measurements of democracy. In general, the statistical results in the book demonstrate that the accountability process is a fertile ground for abuse by the political elites. Thus, democracy in Bulgaria is considerably undermined by the fact that the office of the prosecutor is used in post-media investigations to threaten opponents and create more legitimacy for the media accusations . In Russia, democracy is destabilised because the president monopolises the accountability process. Perhaps the presidentialisation of accountability is not a surprising finding for scholars of Russia but the interesting part of this research is that it demonstrates the particular aspects in which presidentialisation takes place, such as the type of sanctions that incumbents face and the verbal answers that the incumbents give. The findings about the accountability process in Germany show that parliaments may be inefficient in sanctioning incumbents, but political parties outside parliaments can still have an influence in the process.

Despite the gloomy conclusions, the new perspective of democracy through the lens of post-media accountability provides some reasons for hope. There is a great degree of uncertainty in this process because it is multifaceted, there are many actors, the actors change and so do the issues . Thus, there are aspects that show that the broad and largely detrimental process of presidentialisation, judicialisation and de-parliamentarisation of accountability can actually have a silver lining. The empirical results demonstrate that some groups can affect the otherwise presidentialised accountability process in Russia by making their grievances public through the media, as the Navalny anti-corruption protests in March 2017 did. Furthermore, the findings demonstrate how the judicialisation of accountability in Bulgaria can have a positive effect because it introduces a more factual public discourse, which centres on evidence and witnesses.

The Double-Sided Role of the Media in Government Accountability

This analysis opens up by suggesting that the role of the media in government accountability should be re-evaluated and that, ultimately, it is overvalued. The main obstacle to understanding the role of the media is limiting the analysis to the idea that the media are mostly important in criticising the government publicly. This idea is usually attached to two broader contentions. The first one is that investigative reporting, along with the bias, ownership and independence of the media, is of utmost importance in publicising the accusations . This myth has been debunked by studies suggesting that the percentage of media allegations actually made by journalists is very slim (Jacobs and Schillemans 2016; Dimova 2012). Most of the time, media allegations a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Government Accountability in the Media Age: How to Measure, Explain and Assess It?
• Part I. Explaining Government Accountability: A Model of Supply and Demand
• Part II. Evaluating Government Accountability: Methodological Considerations and Empirical Results
• Part III. Democracy Analyzed Through the Lens of Accountability: Crisis or Transformation?
• Back Matter