The Blackmail of the Unaccountable

How electoral irresponsibility and political demagoguery transfer the costs of failure to those trying to prevent institutional collapse.

The Blackmail of the Unaccountable
The kidnapping of common sense: the perverse business of political irresponsibility
By Dr. Nelson Jorge Mosco Castellano

There is an anomaly in the functioning of our contemporary democracies that political science often disguises under the noble concept of “popular sovereignty,” but which in practice operates as a mechanism of institutional extortion.
I refer to the perfect and outrageous impunity surrounding both the demagogic ruler and the irresponsible voter, a perverse dynamic in which the broken dishes from the populist feast always end up on the table of those who warned of the disaster.
The cycle is as predictable as it is grotesque.
A candidate promises the moon, offering magical solutions to complex structural problems that he deliberately ignores for electoral convenience. The citizen, driven by wishful thinking or simple intellectual laziness, buys the illusion.
This is where what economist Bryan Caplan aptly called “rational irrationality” comes into play: since an individual vote rarely determines an election, voting carries virtually no direct economic or personal cost for the voter.
The voter feels entitled to unaccountability.
He can support the most absurd fiscal or institutional proposal based on emotion or prejudice, knowing that if everything collapses, the blame will dissolve into the collective mass.
Political mistakes are free at the ballot box.
But the real drama begins when that dogma collides with reality.
When unsustainable policies start draining public finances, fueling inflation, eroding purchasing power through taxation, and expanding handouts disguised as social justice.
The government does not stop; it doubles down, protected by the democratic legitimacy granted by those unaccountable voters, whether irresponsible or aspiring beneficiaries of state corruption.
At that point, one of the system’s most unfair traps is activated: the blackmail of the opposition.
Under the logic of moral hazard — a concept extensively analyzed by Public Choice theory — irresponsible governments know that serious opposition forces, those that still retain minimal notions of republicanism and stability, cannot simply stand by and watch the country fall into the abyss.
To avoid a humanitarian crisis or a destructive sovereign default, the opposition is forced to negotiate, support the lesser evil, tolerate unqualified officials in key positions, protect the argument that “the alternative is worse,” and sustain a dysfunctional governability that the ruling coalition itself undermines from within.
The sensible become trapped: if they help avoid collapse, they rescue the government from its own failures; if they refuse, they are accused of destabilization and blamed for the crisis.
One of the clearest characteristics of those repeatedly elevated to power through political irresponsibility is their constant appeal for opposition cooperation.
The irresponsible driver heads toward the cliff knowing that the rational passenger will hit the brakes.
The culmination of this farce takes place in the realm of narrative, and no one dismantled that mechanism better than Albert O. Hirschman in his work on the rhetoric of intransigence.
When stagnation, decline, or mediocrity become impossible to hide, the populist script deploys the rhetoric of sabotage: “They wouldn’t let us govern.”
Failure is never attributed to the original promises being unworkable, but to dark forces, obstructionist opponents, or institutional constraints that prevented the model from advancing further.
The rulers become entirely unaccountable for their actions while warning that their successors would be even worse because they would intensify the destructive consequences of the same ideological agenda.
It is a perfect rhetorical maneuver.
By shifting responsibility to the very opponents who must save them from disaster to avoid harming the country, governments not only erase their own failures but reset the illusion.
The democratic distinction between majority and minority, which should cooperate within constitutional limits, becomes a childish form of blackmail: “Be careful, we can make things even worse.”
Every blackmail has consequences.
In this case, the worst consequence is obscuring the responsibility of a failed government by sharing the burden that properly belongs to those elected to govern.
If impossible solutions were promised from the beginning; if power was achieved democratically without competent people to fulfill the promise of being “the best government” or “the government of honesty,” then those responsible for oversight cannot be asked to soften their scrutiny merely because the alternatives may be even more radical or corrupt.
That risk places all critics of economic and social policies into the category of “the establishment,” and they will eventually pay the political price.
If a government was elected because its proposal won the most votes, then it should govern and fully assume responsibility for the consequences of its decisions.
Only then can citizens truly perceive the opportunity cost of their electoral choices.
Otherwise, the fallacy of the second chance emerges: “If we return and receive even more power, then we will finally achieve the promised changes.”
The tragedy is that the unaccountable voter, desperate to protect his ego and avoid admitting he was deceived, often buys the argument again.
Maintaining a republic under these rules becomes a quixotic task.
As long as politics rewards victimhood narratives and punishes fiscal and institutional responsibility, we will continue witnessing the same disturbing spectacle: vocal minorities damaging the future while majorities claim the right to avoid responsibility for their own decisions.
For the good of everyone, let voters assume responsibility; let governments expose in full clarity their lack of a superior course; let citizens see when political actors merely sought power to deceive both those who voted for them and those who must endure the consequences through democratic mandate.

Political Accountability
Moral Hazard
Electoral Demagoguery

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