A Reflection on Leadership, Accountability, Power and the Responsibility We Owe the Next Generation
There is something interesting about the relationship between citizens and institutions.
As citizens, we are taught our responsibilities very clearly.
Obey the law.
Pay your taxes.
Respect public institutions.
Pay your bills and contributions.
Meet deadlines.
And when you fail to meet those obligations, accept the consequences.
Pay your tax late, and there may be a penalty. Fail to meet a contractual obligation, and consequences may follow. Fail to pay school fees, and your child’s education may be interrupted.
There is nothing inherently wrong with these expectations. Societies cannot function without rules, responsibilities and consequences.
But there is a question that deserves equal attention:
What happens when the institution fails the citizen?
When citizens are expected to account for every obligation, but institutional failures are explained indefinitely as administrative challenges, technical problems or matters still “under process,” we create an imbalance that deserves serious reflection.
This is not an argument against government.
It is not an argument against taxation, regulation, public institutions or authority.
Quite the opposite.
It is an argument for stronger institutions.
Because institutions become stronger—not weaker—when they are capable of demanding accountability from citizens while accepting accountability themselves.
The Social Contract Cannot Travel in Only One Direction
Imagine a parent who is late paying school fees.
The institution may respond immediately: pay what is owed, perhaps including a penalty, or the child may face consequences.
Now imagine the reverse.
The parent pays everything required, but the service promised to the child is consistently inadequate. Or perhaps an overpayment was made and obtaining reimbursement requires months of correspondence, approvals and administrative procedures.
Suddenly accountability becomes complicated.
The same question can arise in public services.
Citizens may pay taxes, infrastructure charges and other legally required contributions. They are expected to comply with regulations and may face penalties when they do not.
But suppose a community repeatedly struggles with inadequate water supply, unreliable electricity, poor infrastructure or another essential service.
Who explains?
Who apologises?
Who is responsible for correcting it?
What remedy exists?
And perhaps most importantly:
What consequence within the institution ensures that the same failure does not simply become normal?
These questions are not evidence that every service failure represents misconduct. Governments and institutions operate under real constraints: limited budgets, population growth, infrastructure deficits, competing priorities, emergencies and imperfect information.
No serious understanding of leadership should expect perfection.
But accountability is not the same thing as perfection.
Accountability begins with the willingness to answer for what happened.
Accountability Is More Than Saying, “We Are Working on It”
Public-administration scholar Mark Bovens provides a useful framework.
In his influential 2007 paper Analysing and Assessing Accountability: A Conceptual Framework, Bovens describes accountability as a relationship in which an actor must explain and justify their conduct, another party can question and judge that conduct, and consequences may follow. (DOI)
That distinction is powerful.
It means accountability is not simply publishing a report.
It is not holding a press conference.
It is not saying that a matter is being handled.
It is not transferring a citizen from one office to another until exhaustion replaces the original complaint.
True accountability contains at least three important ideas:
information, justification and consequences.
An institution explains what happened.
It justifies the decisions that were made.
Someone independent or legitimately empowered can question that explanation.
And where responsibility is established, corrective consequences are possible.
If citizens experience the last element when they fail—penalties, fines, suspension of services—but institutions experience only the first when they fail—explanations—we have created an asymmetry of accountability.
Power Changes the Equation
This is why discussions about accountability cannot ignore power.
The World Bank’s World Development Report 2017: Governance and the Law examines how unequal distributions of power can undermine policy effectiveness and contribute to exclusion, capture and clientelism. Its broader lesson is important: good policies on paper are insufficient when the institutional environment and distribution of power prevent them from functioning as intended. (World Bank)
That gives us an important leadership principle:
The more power an institution possesses over people’s lives, the stronger its mechanisms of accountability should become—not the weaker.
A citizen and a government institution do not possess equal power.
An employee and an employer do not possess equal organizational power.
A student and a university administration do not possess equal institutional power.
A child and a parent do not possess equal authority.
Therefore, fairness cannot simply mean applying the same expectations to everyone.
It also means ensuring that those who possess greater authority carry greater responsibility for how that authority is exercised.
More than a century ago, British historian Lord Acton expressed a famous warning about concentrated authority:
“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
But another part of his 1887 letter is particularly relevant to leadership accountability. Acton argued that scrutiny should increase as power increases. (Wist)
That may be the more useful lesson for today’s leaders.
Power should not reduce scrutiny.
Power should increase responsibility.
Public Trust Is Built Through Everyday Experience
Institutional trust is sometimes discussed as though citizens simply need to believe more strongly in their institutions.
Research suggests something more complicated.
The OECD’s 2024 Survey on Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions, covering 30 OECD countries, identifies reliability, responsiveness, integrity, openness and fairness as central dimensions shaping trust in public institutions. (OECD)
Importantly, trust is influenced by ordinary experiences.
Can I obtain a service without unnecessary difficulty?
Will I be treated fairly?
If I complain, will anybody listen?
If the institution makes a mistake, can it be corrected?
Does government explain important decisions?
Can citizens meaningfully participate?
The OECD found that only 39% of respondents, on average, believed public services would improve following complaints or that public agencies would adopt innovative ideas to improve services. (OECD)
That finding matters because it points to something deeper than infrastructure.
A citizen may tolerate a mistake.
What becomes harder to tolerate is a system that appears unable to learn from mistakes.
The OECD therefore argues that reliable, responsive and fair public services are important for building trust, particularly in the civil service and local government. (OECD)
This suggests a simple equation:
Service + Responsiveness + Fairness + Accountability = Institutional Trust
Not perfection.
Trust does not require governments to promise that electricity will never fail, that water will never be interrupted, that schools will never make mistakes or that infrastructure will never become inadequate.
Trust requires something more realistic:
When something fails, someone listens. Someone explains. Someone takes responsibility. Someone corrects it. And the system learns.
The Most Dangerous Leadership Culture Is Not One That Makes Mistakes
Every leader will make mistakes.
Every government will make mistakes.
Every company will make mistakes.
Every institution designed by human beings will eventually experience failure.
The dangerous culture is therefore not one in which failure occurs.
It is one in which admitting failure becomes institutionally unacceptable.
Once leaders believe that acknowledging a mistake undermines authority, problems become hidden.
Statistics become defensive.
Criticism becomes uncomfortable.
Bad news struggles to travel upward.
Employees learn to protect leaders rather than inform them.
And eventually the institution begins protecting its image more aggressively than it protects its purpose.
That is where leadership begins losing its meaning.
A leader who says,
“This did not work. I am responsible for ensuring that we understand why. Here is what we will change.”
has not necessarily demonstrated weakness.
That leader may have demonstrated something much more valuable:
institutional maturity.
Leadership Is Not the Privilege of Being Right
One of the most damaging misconceptions we can teach young people is that leadership means always appearing correct.
It does not.
Leadership means accepting responsibility when your decisions affect other people’s lives.
A title may give someone authority.
A law may give an institution power.
An organizational structure may give a manager control.
But none of these automatically produces leadership.
Leadership begins when authority is accompanied by responsibility.
That means the strongest leader in the room should not necessarily be the person least questioned.
Perhaps the strongest leader should be the person most prepared to answer difficult questions.
Rules Should Be Strong Downward — and Accountability Strong Upward
This is the principle I hope young leaders learn.
If you become a manager one day, do not create standards that apply only to your employees.
If you become a CEO, do not demand ownership from your team while explaining away your own failures.
If you become a public servant, remember that public authority is entrusted to you; it is not personal property.
If you become a political leader, remember that criticism is not automatically disloyalty.
If you become a parent, remember that authority over your children carries obligations toward them.
And whenever you acquire power, ask yourself:
Would I accept this system if I were the person with the least power inside it?
That question can transform leadership.
We Should Teach Young People to Correct Foundations, Not Decorate Them
Every generation inherits institutions it did not create.
Some are strong.
Some contain cracks.
Some practices made sense decades ago but no longer respond adequately to today’s society.
The responsibility of the next generation should not be to destroy everything inherited from those before them.
Nor should it be to pretend that every inherited system is perfect.
Their responsibility should be more courageous:
Preserve what works.
Question what does not.
Understand why it failed.
And rebuild where rebuilding is necessary.
The World Bank’s governance research makes a related point: successful reform is not simply about importing “best practices.” Institutions must actually perform the functions society requires, while governance arrangements must confront power asymmetries that can prevent good policies from producing good outcomes. (World Bank)
That is an important lesson for young leaders.
Do not inherit a weak foundation and spend your leadership career painting it.
Fix the foundation.
Accountability Should Increase With Power
Perhaps our understanding of citizenship needs one additional sentence.
Yes:
Citizens have responsibilities toward their country.
But also:
Institutions have responsibilities toward their citizens.
Citizens should respect the law.
Institutions should respect citizens.
Citizens should meet lawful financial obligations.
Institutions should demonstrate responsible stewardship of those resources.
Citizens should answer when they fail to meet their obligations.
Institutions should answer when systems under their responsibility fail.
Citizens should accept legitimate consequences.
Those entrusted with authority should also operate within meaningful systems of review, correction and consequence.
This is not anti-leadership.
This is leadership.
And it is not a call for citizens to expect perfection from government.
It is a call for all of us to reject the idea that accountability belongs mainly to those with less power.
It Is Not Fair, But It Is Okay
Sometimes we encounter situations and quietly tell ourselves:
“It is not fair, but it is okay.”
There is wisdom in accepting what we cannot immediately change.
But acceptance should never become an excuse for institutional complacency.
“It is okay” should mean:
I will remain constructive.
I will respect institutions.
I will obey the law.
I will not allow frustration to turn into destruction.
But it should never mean:
I have stopped asking how we can make the system better.
That distinction matters.
Because constructive criticism is not the enemy of strong institutions.
The OECD notes that open public debate and the ability of institutions to hold one another accountable are themselves elements of resilient democratic systems. It even describes the idea of “sceptical trust”: citizens can scrutinise institutions while remaining committed to the institutions and values themselves. (OECD)
That is perhaps the kind of citizenship we should encourage.
Not blind trust.
Not permanent suspicion.
Constructive trust.
Trust strong enough to support institutions, and courageous enough to question them when necessary.
The Final Test of Leadership
One day, every position ends.
The office will belong to somebody else.
The government will continue.
The company will appoint another CEO.
Another headteacher will occupy the office.
Another generation will inherit the institutions we once controlled.
Power is therefore temporary.
What remains is what we built with it.
The greatest danger is not that we will leave office without impressive titles.
It is that we may leave behind institutions that looked strong because nobody was permitted—or willing—to expose their weaknesses.
Lord Acton’s warning about power remains relevant because authority naturally creates distance between decision-makers and those who experience the consequences of their decisions. (Wist)
Our task as leaders is to shorten that distance.
Listen.
Explain.
Correct.
Accept responsibility.
Build systems capable of questioning us.
And leave those systems stronger than we found them.
Because history will not ultimately care how important we once appeared.
Our titles will disappear.
Our photographs will fade.
Our offices will be occupied by others.
What will matter is whether the institutions we touched became more trustworthy because we were there.
So yes:
It may not be fair today.
And perhaps, for today, it is okay.
But for tomorrow, we have a responsibility to make it better.
That is the leadership foundation worth leaving to the next generation.
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