The Theater of Virtue: How Political Actors Use Ethics to Evade Accountability
We like to believe that when crisis hits or controversies unfold, our leaders will respond with honesty, responsibility, and a willingness to be held to account. But more often than not, what we get is a performance. Instead of concrete reckoning, we see appeals to lofty values—transparency, compassion, fairness, responsibility—spoken with great solemnity and projected as signs of moral seriousness. And yet, these ethical performances rarely translate into meaningful change. What we are witnessing is not the practice of ethics, but the performance of it.
This dynamic—what we might call ethical posturing—turns moral language into a political tool. Values are invoked not to guide decisions, but to manage appearances. They become a way to stabilize authority, deflect criticism, and signal integrity without delivering it. Through the lens of problematization, this article unpacks the political logic of ethical posturing, tracing how morality is transformed from a site of obligation into a mechanism for blame avoidance and image control…
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