Rethinking Accountability: Making Canadian Democracy Work Toward an Interactive and Ethical Public Space

Canadian Westminster democracy is representational and problematic because it maintains accountability structures at the bureaucratic and hierarchical level from the top-down. This results in the exclusion of citizens from the accountability process and a public service and government that makes decisions that mayor may not represent the citizenry. Broadening the democratic context to promote inclusivity, through participatory and deliberative democratic theory, will provide the space for an ethical and active accountability to flourish. Philosophically justifying the need to transition from our current accountability regime to include Alan Gewirth's conception of the community of rights (1996) will make political leaders ethically obliged to effectuate citizen preferences in political processes. By establishing the moral obligation of political leaders to effectively engage citizens in political processes, there must be a discussion of the actual policies and procedures that could guide the process of effectuating citizen preferences. We suggest that information and communication technologies in conjunction with face-to-face consultations may provide a conduit for the successful integration of citizen preferences, thereby resulting in an interactive democratic context which facilitates active accountability for citizens.