I recently listened to an episode of Moral Maze on ‘Personal Responsibility’. Essentially it was a debate over whether personal responsibility was a good thing we should encourage more of, or a not-so-good thing we should re-evaluate or de-prioritise.
My goodness it was a mess. From what I can remember, one side was arguing that getting people to take personal responsibility is not only a legitimate expectation we should all have of one another, more so than we currently do, but also that it is empowering to give people greater personal responsibility, as it helps people to help themselves. Meanwhile, the other side were arguing that what we hold people personally responsible for needs to be dialled back, because we don’t live in a true meritocracy, and much of someone’s personal life situation is determined by factors entirely outside of their control, so it would be unfair to hold them personally responsible for that.
It doesn’t take a genius to see that both of these things can be true; that it can be good to give a person more responsibility, and also be the case that much of that person’s situation is outside of their control and should be treated as such. So why did the debate play out as if these were incompatible, exclusive scenarios?
Reflecting on it since, I think there are two different things we might mean when we say ‘personal responsibility’. And I think it’s the conflation of these two different things that leads to such muddled debate. Only once we clearly distinguish between these distinct elements of ‘personal responsibility’ can we see how the aforementioned scenarios are compatible, and where the debate faltered.
Two Elements of Responsibility
I think there are two different things we might mean when we say someone is ‘responsible’ for something. Sometimes we might mean both together.
1. Accountability
First, when someone is responsible for something, it generally also means they’re held ‘accountable’ for that thing. If the thing goes well, it’s that person’s achievement, and if it goes badly, it’s their fault. To be accountable is to be expected to do something, and to be liable for the consequences of succeeding or failing.
2. Capability
This second meaning is slightly more hidden and less emphasised. When someone is described as a ‘very responsible person’, it generally means they’re very ‘capable’ of doing what might be required or expected of them. It means they’re a safe pair of hands if you want to entrust something to them, or leave it in their care. It’s also what is meant when a person is given ‘increased responsibility’. It’s not just that more is expected of that person, but that they are given greater freedoms or more authority to make them ‘capable’ of meeting those expectations.
Empowerment Versus Expectation
It’s not difficult to see that accountability and capability must come together for genuine personal responsibility. But it’s also easy to overlook this or confuse them, and I think that’s what we do a lot of the time.
More specifically, I think we mistake mere accountability for responsibility, without realising that the crucial second element of capability is lacking or absent.
Accountability without capability is problematic because it sets an expectation that someone will do something, but without empowering them to do it. This happens if you give a shop assistant the responsibility of locking up without giving them the keys. Or if you set speed limits without putting up any signs showing the limit. Or if you tell people they must recycle but provide no bins.
Accountability with capability is true responsibility, because it simultaneously sets an expectation and empowers one to achieve it. It’s what happens when you’re promoted to a role with responsibility for improving a team’s performance, and you’re given the authority to set strategy and make changes to achieve that. Or when you’re expected to achieve a certain grade, and you’re given access to all of the resources and teaching hours you reasonably require to reach that level. Or when you’re expected to manage your own finances, and you have access to all of the accurate information you need to make informed choices and decisions.
Accountability with capability is simply delivering on both sides of the deal. Something is expected of you, and in return you are given the tools you need to fulfil those expectations.
There’s a clear and obvious injustice to accountability without capability. It’s unreasonable to hold people responsible for not living up to expectations that it’s not within their power to meet. And yet this injustice is pervasive in the so-called ‘meritocracy’ we find ourselves in.
Misunderstanding Meritocracy
When politicians in the UK talk about making our society fairer, more equal and more balanced, the word ‘meritocracy’ usually isn’t far behind. The idea of a ‘meritocracy’ is that people are able to progress, achieve and reap rewards through the application of their personal talents, skills and effort. It’s roughly ‘you get out what you put in’, which is probably a mantra we all live by in one respect or another, to some degree or other. On the surface, it makes sense and does seem reasonably fair.
Regardless of whether or not a perfect meritocracy is something we should aspire to, the way in which we purport to make our institutions ‘meritocratic’ is misguided. It’s misguided because it employs the confused notion of personal responsibility we covered above, of accountability without capability, which brings expectation without also delivering empowerment.
We seem to think we can make our institutions meritocratic by ‘leveling the playing field’ purely when it comes to expectations. Under this way of thinking, universities are meritocratic so long as they have the same entry requirements of all students. Hiring is meritocratic so long as the position is advertised externally and all applicants are equally considered. The allocation of funding and awards is meritocratic so long as the judging criteria are the same for all candidates. The idea is that everyone is held equally accountable for the same things. Everyone is held to the same expectations.
What this misses entirely is the unlevel playing field when it comes to how much we’re each empowered with the capability to meet those expectations. It misses any privilege we benefit from which brings things within an easier grasping distance, and any disadvantage we suffer which removes things from easy reach. It ignores benefits from money spent on extra home tutoring and well resourced private schooling, and ignores any challenges from racism, sexism, implicit biases, hunger, lack of access to resources, and lack of time, space and support for learning.
A true meritocracy would need to level this playing field of empowerment or capability, to ensure that everyone is equally as empowered and capable of meeting the expectations they’re held accountable for.
Of course, the factors which create divergence between our different levels of empowerment or capability are myriad, complex and in many cases deeply engrained, so it’s no easy task to level that playing field. This is why we see more conscious institutions choosing to mitigate for the unlevel playing field, rather than level it. A single institution can’t control for the extent to which a person has been empowered or made capable in their life so far, but they can control the expectations they set. As such, we see some institutions moderating their expectations in line with people’s individual situations, as when universities give different or unconditional offers to students they deem to be at a disadvantage.
This is surely better than nothing, but it really is a very poor mitigation for a very large problem in the grand scheme of things. It’s a sticking plaster on a severed head. The root of the problem is the messy and wide ranging inequality of empowerment in every kind of dimension of life you could imagine. And that can only be thoroughly addressed by rebalancing the empowerment itself.
But as long as leaders are able to peddle a misguided notion personal responsibility in terms of accountability alone (without capability), and a view of meritocracy as equality of expectation (without equality of empowerment), it’ll be all too easy for them to look as if they’re fighting for meritocratic fairness while they’re actually leaving real structural inequality entirely untouched.
Expectation over empowerment in Conservative policy
Not only is there a danger of structural inequality being left untouched, there’s a real danger of it being cemented and exacerbated. We need only look at relatively recent Tory policy to see this in action.
Austerity, for example, put the onus on citizens to ‘do the same, with less’. To some, it effectively said, ‘you’ll still need to get that job to feed your family, but without your local library for support and assistance‘. And to some it said ‘you’ll still need to feed your family, but with less money than we were giving you before‘. In fact, as the cost of living has risen and incomes have fallen, the cuts imposed by austerity have effectively demanded that citizens ‘do more, with less’ (as made abundantly clear in this 2012 Oxfam briefing paper). This holds true even while employment has risen, with people having to work more to maintain their income, and many having to absorb the impacts of uncertain hours and limited rights on zero-hours contracts. Under austerity, expectations have increased while empowerment has withered.
One of the clearest examples of expectation trumping empowerment is the implementation of universal credit. Whereas the previous goal had been to pay benefits within 2 weeks of a claim, universal credit was effectively designed with a built in waiting period of 6 weeks, as described here:
UC’s Long Hello comprises a seven day waiting period (an arbitrary period during which a the claimant is not entitled to any award), followed by a Regular Assessment Period of one month (which determines how much the claimant should be paid), and then a further week (or longer if there are administrative problems) for the payment to go through.
Patrick Butler, ‘Debt and food banks: the legacy of universal credit’s Long Hello‘, The Guardian, 9th June 2016
Unsurprisingly, the promise of cash in 6 weeks’ time is not particularly helpful if you’re in need of cash within the next month. And given the way the world works, payments on pretty important things like, say, a place to live or food to eat, tend to be due within the month the costs are incurred, if not sooner (e.g., immediately, at the supermarket till). As detailed in the same article, many claimants ended up in rent arrears, seeking debt advice and relying on charity food parcels in order to see them through the 6 week wait.
More than just a naïve design choice, the 6 week wait time is a clear example of expectation trumping empowerment. Rather than empowering claimants to help themselves by providing the resources they need as soon as possible, the implementation of universal credit said ‘we expect you to survive for another 6 weeks without any of those resources’.
If you need further evidence that this sort of expectation was consciously built into the design of universal credit, you need only look at this press briefing from the Department for Work and Pensions:
“Universal Credit payments are designed to mirror the world of work, with monthly payments reflecting the way many working people are paid.”
Even when people were facing financial hardships to the extent that they needed to claim Universal Credit, there was an overriding concern that claimants be taught a lesson about how payment works in the world of work by being made to wait for payment each month just like many others (despite the fact that many earning less than £10,000 were paid weekly). Note that claimants weren’t actually provided with any kind of training to build skills which might help them secure better paid work, they were simply expected to learn better financial management by being left for a bit longer up financial shit creek.
This punitive and patronising treatment of claimants can only feed the sense of shame associated with claiming benefits, which has become so strong as to dissuade those in need from making a claim. Effectively, we’re even internalising an attitude of expectation over empowerment, where we opt to expect more of ourselves and one another rather than feeling empowered to utilise the help available and encouraging others to do so.
This trend spans across many other areas. Our approach to justice prioritises punishment and the expectation of reform over providing the empowerment to reform, and our approach to education prioritises measuring students against expectations over empowering them to learn.
In sum, the implicit guiding vision of the conservative government has been, and continues to be, one which burdens citizens with expectation rather than elevating them through empowerment.
Moving Forward
To return to the initial quandary of the Moral Maze, we can say the following:
Yes, of course it’s important to give people more personal responsibility, but it can’t be just a blind or punitive raising of expectations; expectations must be accompanied by commensurate or proportionate empowerment which enables people to achieve those expectations.
As usual, I’m going to end with some further questions prompted by this post, which I’ll try to explore in future:
- How can we design the way we do things to grant more actual personal responsibility, where expectations are accompanied by empowerment?
- What role does capital play in this exchange of expectation and empowerment? (It seems that capital empowers those who have it, and expects of those who don’t).
- How might we prevent leaders from peddling a misguided notion personal responsibility in terms of accountability alone (without capability), and a view of meritocracy as equality of expectation (without equality of empowerment)?
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