Role of Managerial and Political Accountability in Improving Performance of Local Governments

Abstract

The belief that governments should be accountable for their actions has brought about many managerial reforms in the form of new public management. However, there are assertions that these performance-oriented managerial reforms weaken the role of political accountability. In this study, by using regression discontinuity design to examine the impact of the South Korean government’s regulatory reform, we explored the relationship between multiple accountability and performance in the public sector. Our findings are as follows: First, we see that managerial accountability systems clearly lead to performance improvement in local governments with poor performance. Second, the impact of managerial accountability on performance depends on political accountability. It means that political accountability should be considered more as a complement, than a substitute.

Keywords:

• Bounded rationality
• government’s performance
• managerial accountability
• performance management
• political accountability

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank anonymous reviewers and Prof. Soun-man Hong for their valuable comments to develop the quality of the manuscript.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education and the National Research Foundation of the Republic of Korea (NRF-2017S1A3A2067636).

Notes on contributors

Suho Ji

Suho Ji is in the doctoral program at Yonsei University in South Korea. He holds a Master of Public Administration from Yonsei University and is interested in public performance, accountable public administration, and local finance.