Accountability without democracy: evidence from Confucian accountability

This article argues that the dominant democratic model of political accountability is shown to have been unduly centred on rights, institutionalisation, and punishment. Drawing inspiration from Confucian classics, this article proposes an alternative model of political accountability in which ethical norms and moral sentiments play crucial roles. Based on a structural analysis of accountability, the comparison between democratic accountability and Confucian accountability demonstrates two implications: first, recognition of the ample resource of accountability in Confucian tradition challenges the idea that the notion of accountability is simply a Western or democratic concept which has no root in Confucian societies; second, as an intellectual tradition and practical wisdom, some of the Confucian insights, reconstructed and applied to modern society, may well have the capacity to address contemporary issues more productively, especially in the domain of democratic deficits, than the dominant liberal approach.