Two Concepts of Accountability: Accountability as a Virtue and as a Mechanism

Abstract

This paper distinguishes between two main concepts of accountability: accountability as a virtue and accountability as a mechanism. In the former case, accountability is used primarily as a normative concept, as a set of standards for the evaluation of the behaviour of public actors. Accountability or, more precisely, being accountable, is seen as a positive quality in organisations or officials. Hence, accountability studies often focus on normative issues, on the assessment of the actual and active behaviour of public agents. In the latter case, accountability is used in a narrower, descriptive sense. It is seen as an institutional relation or arrangement in which an actor can be held to account by a forum. Here, the locus of accountability studies is not the behaviour of public agents, but the way in which these institutional arrangements operate. The present paper argues that distinguishing more clearly between these two concepts of accountability can solve at least some of the current conceptual confusion and may provide some foundation for comparative and cumulative analysis.

Acknowledgements

This paper relies in part on arguments and distinctions made in other recent papers by the author and co-authors (Bovens 2007a, 2007b; Bovens et al. 2008) – even to the extent that some sentences and subparagraphs can be qualified as instances of self-plagiarism. Earlier versions of the paper were presented at the Symposium on Accountable Governance, hosted by the Kettering Foundation in Dayton Ohio, 22–23 May 2008, and at the Economics & Democracy RSSS Annual Conference at the Australian National University in Canberra, 8–10 December 2008. I would like to thank Stephan Grimmelikhuijsen, Paul't Hart, Albert Meijer, and Thomas Schillemans for their constructive comments.

Notes

1. It is probably no coincidence that there is a stronger emphasis on accountability as a virtue in the American discourse, given the central role of public values in the American political and administrative tradition. In Westminster and similar parliamentary systems, the doctrine of ministerial responsibility to parliament is central and hence there is much more emphasis on mechanisms of political and administrative control that can support the supremacy of parliament (see also Aucoin and Jarvis 2005: 22–8).

2. See Fisher (2004: 510) for similar observations about the use of ‘accountability’ in the context of the European Union.

3. Both Friedrich and Finer use the concept of ‘responsibility’ and not ‘accountability’– but the contemporary use of accountability overlaps to a large extent with the way they defined it. Both refer to the definition of the Oxford English Dictionary: ‘a responsible person is one who is answerable for his acts to some other person or body, who has to give an account of his doings and therefore must be able to conduct himself rationally’. In modern Anglo-American political and administrative discourse the uses of ‘accountable’ and ‘accountability’ increasingly seem to overlap with ‘responsible’ and ‘responsibility’.

4. See for a study that suggests a positive link between public accountability as a virtue and public trust Danaee Fard and Anvary Rostamy (2007).

5. In the field of criminal law, the concept of restorative justice is an important innovation that focuses on improving this element of accountability in particular (Braithwaite 2006).

6. This paragraph and the next is adapted from Bovens et al. (2008).

7. One World Trust, for example, has developed an accountability framework along these same lines for research organisations that engage in policy relevant research (Whitty 2008).