| authors | Bovens, M.A.P.; Hart, P. 't; Schillemans, T. |
| source | Public administration, Volume: 86, Issue: 1 (2008), pp. 225-242 |
| full text | [Full text]
|
| publisher | Blackwell Publishing Ltd |
| URL publisher | [Website publisher]
|
| document type | Article |
| disciplines | Social Sciences |
| abstract | In recent years, there has been a drive to strengthen existing public accountability arrangements
and to design new ones. This prompts the question whether accountability arrangements actually
work. In the existing literature, both accountability ‘ defi cits ’ and ‘ overloads ’ are alleged to exist.
However, owing to the lack of a cogent yardstick, the debate tends to be impressionistic and eventdriven.
In this article we develop an instrument for systematically assessing public accountability
arrangements, drawing on three different normative perspectives. In the democratic perspective,
accountability arrangements should effectively link government actions to the ‘ democratic chain
of delegation ’ . In the constitutional perspective, it is essential that accountability arrangements
prevent or uncover abuses of public authority. In the learning perspective, accountability is a tool
to make governments effective in delivering on their promises. We demonstrate the use of our
multicriteria assessment tool in an analysis of a new accountability arrangement: the boards of
oversight of agencies. |
| keywords | accountability, government |
| ISSN | 1467-9299 |
