After the Evasion: Problematizing the Conditions for Real Accountability in Political Life

Toward Structural Honesty, Shared Responsibility, and the Recovery of Democratic Integrity

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Introduction

Blame avoidance is not an anomaly in modern governance—it is a central logic, a guiding architecture of speech, action, and institutional design. Over the course of this series, we have explored how responsibility is displaced through rhetoric, policy, process, and silence. We have seen how political actors use crisis language to suspend scrutiny, how institutions outsource accountability to the margins, and how even the language of care can be transformed into a shield for inaction. What remains to be asked is this: after the evasion, what might accountability look like? If problematization reveals how blame is deflected, deferred, and denied, can it also help us imagine how responsibility might be reclaimed, shared, and sustained?