Moral sentiments and collective action: performing accountability at the time of a crisis

Extending Goffman’s dramaturgical framework, this paper theorizes the act of giving an account as a performance aimed at bringing about moral sentiments and collective action in the audience. Previous accounting studies have theorized accountability as a rational calculative device (Robson, 1992), a rhetorical discourse (Smith et al, 2010; Rutherford, 2018; Beattie, 2014) or an ethical obligation arising in an interpersonal encounter (McKernan, 2012; Roberts, 1991, Shearer, 2002). Our analysis conceptualizes accountability as a performance, i.e. an activity which serves to influence others’ actions and beliefs. Empirically, the paper analyses the account-giving of politicians and public administrators broadcasted on television and press conferences during the first months of COVID-19 outbreak in Italy. The analysis covers the period from late January 2020 - when Italy’s experience with the new coronavirus began - to the latest developments in the crisis. Italy is a paradigmatic case as it was the first European country affected by the crisis. With limited precedents on how to cope with it, especially in democratic settings, the government took controversial decisions and accounted for them in a sequence of staged performances. Our analysis of these performances unveils the (moral) performativity of accountability that, we argue, becomes particularly salient in moments of uncertainty and emergency. With moral performativity, we refer to the attempt to achieve a “working consensus” (Goffman, 1956, 4) over the public values to be enacted. Concretely, we interpret the performance of account-giving in the case under consideration as a dramaturgical process aiming at “an expressive rejuvenation and reaffirmation of the moral values of the community” (Goffman, 1956, 25). By depicting themselves and others as morally accountable subjects, governmental performers were able to convey communal values and moral sentiments, construct a shared (moral) interpretation and shape the collective response of the audience. Crucially, the roles of performer, audience, observers and co-participants became blurred as a community was formed to deliver a ‘successful’ performance. In this process, the setting, staging and scripting of the account-giving presented a moral view of the situation that was at least temporarily legitimate and acceptable to the public. We posit that a dramaturgy of accountability offers a valuable analytical lens to understand how governments shape collective behaviour to legitimate otherwise controversial measures at the time of a crisis.