THE SONTAG AWARD This week's winner is the London Review of Books, which asked its regular writers for commentary on the terrorist attack against the United States. The result is an extraordinary tissue of political hatred, intellectual vulgarity, and moral incapacity. The entire issue belongs in a museum, under glass, as the definitive display of ideology's triumph over thought and the archetypal example of thinkers unable to think in any new way, even with the horror in front of them of 6,000 dead. So, Mary Beard writes, "However tactfully you dress it up, the United States had it coming." Terry Eagleton adds, "There is no conscious hypocrisy in believing yourself the great bastion of freedom while...embargoing Iraqi children to death and being in effect a one-party state." Fredric Jameson, Michael Rogin, Richard Rorty, Edward Said, Michael Wood--one thinker after another in a parade of thoughtlessness. But three of the commentaries are particularly astonishing, if only for their source. What could possess Thomas Laqueur to assert that "On the scale of evil the New York bombings are sadly not so extraordinary and our Government has been responsible for many that are probably worse"? The Yale literary critic David Bromwich used to be a subtle reader of poetry, but now he writes with incredible intellectual vulgarity that patriotism and religious belief are to blame for the recent attacks: "Terrorism, religious orthodoxy, and nationalism of all kinds (insurgent as well as established) have become in our time inseparable companions: those who apologize for one thereby take on their conscience the crimes of the rest." Finally, there is Eric Foner, the Columbia historian, who has placed himself beyond the pale with a commentary that begins: "I'm not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House." Perhaps the London Review of Books has done us a favor, for we will never have to take any of these writers seriously again. BOOKS IN BRIEF Rethinking Democratic Accountability by Robert D. Behn (Brookings, 192 pp., $41.95) What would it mean to hold public officials democratically accountable? According to the view that long held sway, accountability consists in assuring that officials keep their books in order and comply with proper procedures. Robert Behn argues this paradigm is seriously deficient. By dwelling on finances and procedural fairness, it created an "ethics police" which stifled creativity, discouraged discretion, and obscured questions about performance. Moreover, this notion of accountability rests on an unconvincing distinction between policy-making and administration, as though administrators did not need to make policy judgments to implement programs devised by elected representatives. With an agreeable mixture of good humor, common sense, and scholarship, Behn espouses a "new public-administration paradigm" that he contends is more flexible and fair, balancing concerns about ethics with efficiency and effectiveness. Drawing on recent work in game theory, the logic of collective action, and the evolution of cooperation, Behn argues that respect for rules can be promoted and performance enhanced by employing "compacts of mutual collective responsibility." These compacts, voluntarily entered into by public officials, harness self-interest and work to make public officials more accountable to the people by making them more accountable to one another. Whether democratic accountability is the only accountability with which democracies need concern themselves, and what role a sense of honor, a commitment to excellence, and a love of justice play in holding one's fellow citizens and oneself accountable, are questions that go beyond the scope of Behn's analysis--as it goes beyond much of the political science scholarship on which Behn relies. --Peter Berkowitz October 22, 2001 - Volume 7, Number 6