Richard Mulgan

‘Accountability’: An Ever‐Expanding Concept?

The scope and meaning of ‘accountability’ has been extended in a number of directions well beyond its core sense of being called to account for one’s actions. It has been applied to internal aspects of official behaviour, beyond the external focus implied by being called to account; to institutions that control official behaviour other than through calling officials to account; to means of making officials responsive to public wishes other than through calling them to account; and to democratic dialogue between citizens where no one is being called to account. In each case the extension is readily intelligible because it is into an area of activity closely relevant to the practice of core accountability. However, in each case the extension of meaning may be challenged as weakening the importance of external scrutiny

Public Accountability of Provider Agencies: The Case of the Australian ‘Centrelink’

Introduction: executive agencies and accountability One of the major international innovations in public sector institutional design of the last decade has been the institutional separation of purchasing and providing functions previously carried out by line departments (OECD, 1995: 32). This split may take a number of different forms (Department of Finance, 1995), including the allocation of providing functions to new executive agencies which are institutionally separate but still remain part of the executive branch of government. The legal status of such agencies may vary from that of designated units within the controlling departments (as with the United Kingdom ‘executive agencies’) to that of separate departments or statutory authorities (‘crown entities’ to use the New Zealand term). Though, strictly speaking, the term ‘executive agency’ can be reserved for providing agencies without separate statutory status on the United Kingdom model (e.g. Wettenhall, 2000: 81), it will be used here to cover any type of government agency, including statutory authorities, established with the sole purpose of providing state-funded services under contract. In Westminster-style jurisdictions where executive agencies have been introduced, notably the United Kingdom and New Zealand, controversy has surrounded their political accountability, particularly the effect of the new structure on ministerial responsibility (Martin, 1994, 1997; O’Toole and Chapman, 1995; Pyper, 1995; Barberis, 1998; Hodgetts, 1998; Polidano, 1999). To what extent, if any, has the break between purchasing ministers and providing agencies led to a corresponding change in the accountability of ministers to Parliament? Have agency heads taken over the accountability for service provision, leaving ministers accountable only for purchasing issues and matters of general policy? Or is it business as usual, with ministers still being held accountable for details of service provision? No clear consensus has emerged, either in theory or practice. When crises have occurred, ministers, officials and public alike have sometimes been left floundering in a tide of mutual recrimination as each side points the blame at the other (Barberis, 1998; cf. Gregory, 1998).

Outsourcing and public service values: The Australian experience

With the increasing use of private organizations to provide public services and the corresponding blurring of boundaries between the public and private sectors, can public servants be held to a distinct code of ethics or should public sector ethical standards be applied to private providers? This question is explored in the context of the Australian Commonwealth which has recently codified a set of public service values in legislation and where agencies are being asked to report on the extent to which they require contractors to comply with public service values. Practice is evolving, with most emphasis on values relating to direct service to the public. Public service values dealing with internal organization and employment conditions, including the merit principle, are less likely to be extended to private contractors.

One Cheer for Hierarchy- Accountability in Disjointed Governance

The recent trend to devolved and decoupled governance has raised issues of accountability. Are networks of independent actors and agencies more or less accountable than traditional government hierarchies under political control? The same question has long been posed of federations versus unitary systems. Accountability itself is a contested term with different versions placing more or less emphasis on external scrutiny versus internal responsibility and on rectification. Networks are stronger in the communicative stages of accountability (information and discussion) provided that the networks themselves are open and transparent. Hierarchies, however, offer better prospects of rectification, being less prone to buck-passing, provided that the head (as in ministerial responsibility) is personally accountable for exercising the obligations of collective accountability.

Auditors-General: Cuckoos in the Managerialist Nest?

The role of Auditors-General has expanded in recent decades, particularly with the development of performance auditing. Performance auditing originated in the managerialist concern for monitoring results, but in some respects Auditors-General have found themselves at odds with managerialism, particularly where outsourcing and privatisation have reduced the level of public accountability. Performance auditing has also increased the potential for Auditors-General to clash openly with elected governments, though for the most part they confine their scrutiny to the activities of public servants. Auditors-General have more authority to confront governments over matters of propriety than over efficiency and effectiveness issues.

Making Open Government Work

1. Challenges of Transparency and Accountability 2. The Evolving Context 3. Dealing with Politicians 4. Dealing with Freedom of Information 5. Dealing with the News Media 6. Dealing with the Legislature 7. Dealing with Regulators 8. Dealing with Courts and Judicial Review 9. Dealing with Stakeholders 10. Dealing with Contractors and Partners 11. Conclusions

Deirdre Curtin, Peter Mair and Yannis Papadopoulos (eds), Accountability and European Governance

frameworks to produce processes that are highly valuable in the enhancement of relationships between Maori and the Crown (p. 136). The implication is that such substantive combinations of local and institutional values and process can be applied elsewhere and maximise the durability of resolutions. Examination of cases from Southwest Pacific Islands in Part Three of the book immediately contrasts with Western frameworks of conflict resolution – whether because of the plurality of customary approaches that further dispute resolution in a way that legal forms do not (Ch. 7), or because the achievement of peace is seen as a long-term process that cannot be hurried and/or rushed (Ch. 8), or indeed, as Chapter 9 indicates, by using the space shared by different ethnicities and religions to promote integration and revival of relations after violent conflict (p. 187). Japanese customs also provide this conviviality in the form of kyosei, or ‘to productively live together’ (p. 205), achieved through consensus, dialogue, fairness and multilateralism. Such a concept is perhaps the most useful for Western academic conceptualisations of conflict resolution in that it does not seek to eradicate inherent contradictions in principles and values but rather seeks to establish a harmless coexistence (p. 212). Similarly, Chinese Confucianist traditions also offer insights for coexistence and conviviality through the intersubjectiveness of the self and the reciprocity and mutual responsiveness between differences. A final case that demonstrates the distance between Western and Asian approaches to conflict and its resolution is the case of Korea. Bleiker and Hoang discuss the concept of Han (sadness, sorrow), and how it provides alternatives to instrumental rationality. In Western approaches, the latter is detached from emotions in order to understand and deal with conflict situations. The former, however, does not see emotions as a hindrance to negotiation and dispute resolution. Rather, it uses sorrow to produce introspection which will in turn lead to the restoration of reconciliation and harmony. ‘[C]onflict resolution is [not] possible merely by removing the cause of the grievances’ (p. 256). This book is an extremely valuable collection of viewpoints, processes, values and traditions of worlds and cultures that the Western traditions of conflict resolution and peacebuilding seem to have ignored. None of the contributors to this volume has claimed that theirs is an examination of the most peaceful cultures on the planet. Rather, they successfully argue that while violence is an inherent human characteristic, so too are the ways in which violence is dealt with. In other words, dispute and its resolution are two sides of the same coin, simply because every community and society needs (and indeed possesses) mechanisms to dissipate and deal with conflict in order to move forward. It is these kinds of processes that Western foundations of conflict resolution have ignored in their dealings with ‘far away’ places and cultures, because they have been mostly preoccupied with the absence of violence. Yet, as Chan indicates in his conclusion, this book deals with peace as ‘a platform on which much else must be built, and it cannot be improvised into place – the platform must fit into the environment in which it sits’ (p. 271). The feeling I got by reading this book is that I must re-learn conflict resolution. And as such, I believe it will be of extreme value to students, scholars, practitioners and diplomats alike, to whom I recommend it unreservedly.

Book Review: Jeffrey L. Brudney, Laurence J. O’Toole, Jr. and Hal G. Rainey (eds.), Advancing Public Management: New Developments in Theory, Methods and Practice (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2000), pp. 304, paperback

... a new, new left, serious about radical and plural democracy, and about social and material justice, without which democracy is meaningless, needs to rethink its historically negative attitude about federalism. In a globalising world of integration and fragmentation, plural communities and multi-level governance, it can either continue to dream a dream of democratic centralism, or it can fight for the democratic empowerment of new spaces. There is no Third Way (p. 243).

US 24.95

‘Accountability’ and ‘accountable’ are buzzwords of our era. Government services break down but no one is prepared to take responsibility — surely someone should be held ‘accountable’. Officials make far-reaching decisions behind closed doors and deny the public access to their deliberations — where is ‘accountability? Politicians openly abandon their election promises without suffering any retribution — how can we make them more ‘accountable’? Company directors and executives reward themselves at the expense of their shareholders even when their companies fail — shareholders demand more ‘accountability’ from management. Churches cover up sexual abuses practised by their priests on defenceless minors — the church must be made ‘accountable’.

Issues of Accountability

In several important respects, the processes by which governments are held accountable are unique to the government sector. For instance, certain key government accountability mechanisms, such as the legislature, policy dialogue or freedom of information, have no direct equivalent in the non-government sectors. The distinction between public and private law marks out a significant difference in the way that the courts handle legal claims against government and private institutions. However, many other aspects of government accountability, such as elections, audit and media scrutiny have equivalents or close parallels in the nongovernment sectors. Some aspects of the law apply equally to all sectors. Moreover, the general rationale underlying accountability, the need to hold the powerful to account, is common across all sectors. So too are some of the problems to which accountability gives rise, for instance the difficulty of allocating responsibility and accountability within large organisations (Chapter 6). This chapter compares accountability within the three main sectors — public, commercial and non-profit — in order to identify the main differences and similarities.