The Affective Underpinnings of Institutional Accountability Practices

Abstract

This chapter examines the interplay between officeholders’ emotions and the relations of accountability essential for institutional functioning. It builds on a human-centered view of institutional action, whose well-functioning rests on two accountability relations: answerability, an asymmetric practice of demanding explanations under the threat of sanction; and addressability, a symmetric practice of mutual reason-giving among participants in a shared co-authored project. It argues that emotions are constitutive elements of both relations rather than contingent epiphenomena and byproducts. Emotions such as anticipatory shame, justified hope, and professional pride can motivate officeholders to disclose information, engage in reflective deliberation, and uphold institutional functioning. Conversely, fear, hubris, or resentful cynicism can prompt evasion, silence, and the breakdown of cooperative interactions. By mapping specific affective states onto the practices that sustain or impair each mode of accountability, the chapter clarifies how the normative quality of institutional action depends on a human "emotional footprint" as much as on formal procedures and institutional mechanisms. The analysis further shows why procedural reforms that disregard emotions risk crowding out trust relationships and undermining institutional functioning. Drawing on political philosophy and the philosophy of emotions, the chapter thus provides a nuanced understanding of how the officeholders’ individual affective states and affective relationships may shape the normative quality of institutional action for better or worse. It thus invites policymakers and scholars to integrate affective considerations into oversight design, capacity-building, and civic education, thereby securing adaptive, trustworthy, and publicly responsive institutional action.