“In the ancient Greek mythology, when Achilles was told that he is going to die soon, his mother dipped him in the eternal waters of the River Styx. However, he later lost his life because of his heel, by which his mother had held him.”
Former US President Abraham Lincoln once said that, “democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people”. Democracy is so far the best political system to protect human rights, freedom, human life, and private property. Since democracies set rules that are established by the majority, its institutes govern, legislate, and enforce justice on behalf of the majority and thus must fulfill their duty to report to the society – it’s called accountability. Accountability is essential to a democratic government. Accountability refers to the government’s (companies and private persons alike) assessment of their own actions, their taking of responsibility for the results and reporting their assessment publicly.
Accountability can be divided into two categories: procedural and substantive. Procedural accountability is considered to be the basis of democracy, such as establishing its legislative, executive and judicial institutions by holding free and fair elections on all levels. Substantive accountability refers to the transparency of public institutions, economic and social development, relative equality of the people, the freedom of opinion and respect for the rule of law. These two types of accountabilities are interdependent. For instance, social and economic equality are influenced by the election outcomes, thus dependent on political equality.
Procedural accountability, based on democratic elections, can only be implemented if there is a condition to vote freely and fairly from multiple parties. Substantive accountability is indicated by the states’ ability to fulfill its promises, meet the public demand and how the people perceive their government. Therefore, a full accountability can only prevail in places, where its democratic government is established by free and fair election. In the Scandinavian countries the accountability is at its fullest, meanwhile in Singapore, procedural accountability is vulnerable and substantive accountability is partially developed.
Substantive Accountability
Singaporean people are satisfied with their government, due to its response, which often fully reflects the issues and challenges that majority of the people are facing. Before a decision is made
- Public consultations take place regularly through REACH, the Singapore Government’s feedback unit engagement platform
- Possible policy alternatives are introduced
- Consensus is reached as the people are included in the decision making process. For instance, reaching consensus on location of building parking lots
- The policy is defined together. For instance, citizens formulate and define the policies in collaboration with the public organizations in the first place and implement them together.
Another example is our neighbour China, an authoritarian one-party state. Political scientist Bruce J.Dickson conducted a large questionnaire survey in 2014 that involved 50 cities and 4000 people in China. The survey showed that Chinese people perceive their political system as democratic and are satisfied with the level of democracy. Although the procedural accountability is missing, the substantive part still exists. This is explained by the fact that the government is delivering the social services, such as health care and education.
Procedural Accountability
Seven parliamentary elections since 1990 in Mongolia would mean that we practiced procedural accountability ever since. Although the democratic procedure seems successful in its form, its substance has not yet matured. This is indicated by the weak substantive accountability in Mongolia.
Hitherto, the two major political parties which held state power single-handed or as a coalition, have not been serving the public interests. Instead, they have been serving the interests of the groups that financed them. I have named this phenomenon “Erdenebilegism”, as I already addressed this in my previous two articles. “Erdenebilegism” is not a matter of single individual or single commercial bank. This is the indication of a system where main political forces only serve the needs of a few by adopting favorable laws, while the police and judiciary instances colluded with them.
Achilles Heel
The Mongolian people are starting to doubt whether the politicians they elected really represent them and are attempting to solve public issues. The erosion of trust in the democracy in Mongolia is tied to the weak substantive accountability. The Mongolians usually assume that their government consists of no more than 100 people in the parliament and government, while there are more than 100 thousands of public officers employed. All the actions they take and decisions they make are also part of the state policy. The purpose of a democratic accountability system is that public officers take responsibility for their decisions. The regulations on this responsibility mechanism have already been conceptualized, yet the enforcement is absent. These include the ‘General Administrative Law’ and ‘The Law on Information Transparency and Right to Information’. The root cause for the absence of substantive accountability is that we are selling public service positions for “60 billions”.
2020.06.11
Trans. by Riya.T and Sungerel.U