Rules and Responsibility: What Kinds of Rule Systems Encourage Responsibility Rather than Accountability?

We have all encountered situations in which people justify seemingly irrational behavior by referring to rules mandating that behavior. This paper contrasts rules that are especially likely to encourage counterproductive behavior (such as a focus on avoiding blame rather than on achieving some desirable objective) with rules that are more likely to encourage responsibility. The paper argues that if rules are to encourage responsibility rather than only accountability, they must provide for accurate and complex cognitive representations of the situation being governed, flexible adjustment to local circumstances, mechanisms to compensate for bounded imagination by requiring full consideration of a small number of alternatives, and devices for developing the moral competence of key actors. Examples from medical care, marine insurance, environmental regulation, the regulation of nuclear power, record keeping practices, and the organization of academic life are used to illustrate the arguments.