Accountability in Governance

Accountability in Governance

 

Accountability ensures actions and

decisions taken by public officials are

subject to oversight so as to

guarantee that government

initiatives meet their stated

objectives and respond to the needs

of the community they are meant to

be benefiting, thereby contributing

to better governance and poverty

reduction.

Accountability is one of the cornerstones of

good governance; however, it can be

difficult for scholars and practitioners alike

to navigate the myriad of different types of

accountability. Recently, there has been a

growing discussion within both the

academic and development communities

about the different accountability typologies.

This Note outlines the present debate

focusing on the definition and substance of

different forms of accountability and

considers the key role that legislatures play

in ensuring accountability.

What is Accountability?

The notion of accountability is an

amorphous concept that is difficult to define

in precise terms. However, broadly

speaking,

a relationship where an individual or body,

and the performance of tasks or functions by

that individual or body, are subject to

another’s oversight, direction or request that

they provide information or justification for

their actions.

Therefore, the concept of accountability

involves two distinct stages:

accountability exists when there is answerability

and

the obligation of the government, its

agencies and public officials to provide

information about their decisions and

actions and to justify them to the public and

those institutions of accountability tasked

with providing oversight. Enforcement

suggests that the public or the institution

responsible for accountability can sanction

the offending party or remedy the

contravening behavior. As such, different

institutions of accountability might be

responsible for either or both of these stages.

Why is Accountability Important

to Governance?

Evaluating the ongoing effectiveness of

public officials or public bodies ensures that

they are performing to their full potential,

providing value for money in the provision

of public services, instilling confidence in

the government and being responsive to the

community they are meant to be serving.

What types of Accountability?

The concept of accountability can be

classified according to the type of

accountability exercised and/ or the person,

group or institution the public official

answers to. The present debate as to the

content of different forms of accountability

is best conceptualized by reference to

opposing forms of accountability. As such

the main forms of accountability are

described below in reference to their

opposing, or alternate, concept.

Horizontal vs. Vertical Accountability

The prevailing view is that institutions of

accountability, such as parliament and the

judiciary, provide what is commonly termed

horizontal accountability, or the capacity of

a network of relatively autonomous powers

(i.e., other institutions) that can call into

question, and eventually punish, improper

ways of discharging the responsibilities of a

given official. In other words, horizontal

accountability is the capacity of state

institutions to check abuses by other public

agencies and branches of government, or the

requirement for agencies to report sideways.

Alternatively, vertical accountability is the

means through which citizens, mass media

and civil society seek to enforce standards of

good performance on officials.

While parliament is typically considered as a

key institution in constructs of horizontal

accountability, it is also important in vertical

accountability. Citizens and civil society

groups can seek the support of elected

representatives to redress grievances and

intervene in the case of inappropriate or

inadequate action by government. In

addition, through the use of public hearings,

committee investigations and public

petitioning, parliament can provide a vehicle

for public voice and a means through which

citizens and civic groups can question

government and seek parliamentary

sanctioning where appropriate.

Political versus Legal Accountability

Parliament and the judiciary act as

horizontal constitutional checks on the

power of the executive. The role of these

two institutions can be further delineated in

that parliament holds the executive

politically accountable, whilst the judiciary

holds the executive legally accountable.

These classifications stem from the fact

parliament is a political institution, while the

judiciary can only adjudicate on legal issues.

Together, they provide ongoing oversight in

order to keep the government accountable

throughout its term in office. They may also

be aided by other institutions, such as

supreme audit institutions, anti-corruption

commissions, ombuds offices and human

rights institutes. These secondary

‘autonomous institutions of accountability’

are typically designed to be independent of

the executive; in the case of supreme audit

institutions (in ‘Westminster parliamentary

systems’), anti-corruption commissions and

ombuds offices they often report to

parliament while in the cases of supreme

audit institutions in Francophone countries

and human rights institutes, they may be part

of the judiciary.

Political accountability usually manifests

itself in the concept of individual ministerial

responsibility, which is the cornerstone of

the notion of responsible government (see

below).

Another School of Thought: Horizontal

versus Vertical Accountability

A minority of commentators diverge in their

opinion as to what constitutes horizontal and

vertical accountability. An alternate

conception of horizontal and vertical

accountability relies on the relationship

between parties to determine whether one

party exercises horizontal or vertical

accountability over the other. In instances

where there is a classic top-down, principalagent

relationship, whereby the principal

delegates to the agent, the agent is

accountable to their direct superiors in the

chain-of-command and this constitutes a

form of vertical accountability. For instance

the public official answers to the

department/ agency minister, the department

answers to the minister, the minister answers

to parliament (in particular in parliamentary

systems), and parliament answers to

citizens.

Parliament is again a key actor. In terms of

holding government officials to account,

parliament is the principal and the official

the agent. Parliament, as principal, requires

the government and its officials, as agents,

to implement the laws, policies and

programs it has approved – and holds the

government and officials to account for their

performance in this regard.

Parliament is also an agent, in that the

electorate (the principal) elects legislators to

enact laws and oversee government actions

on their behalf. The electorate then hold

legislators to account at election time and, in

a few jurisdictions, through recall, where

dissatisfied voters can recall their elected

representative and vote for an alternative.

.

The absence of the direct principal-agent

relationship relegates the accountability

relationship to one of horizontal

accountability or social accountability. In

order for there to be social or horizontal

accountability a hierarchical relationship is

generally lacking between actor and forum,

as are any formal obligations to render

account.

Social Accountability

The prevailing view of social accountability

is that it is an approach towards building

accountability that relies on civic

engagement, namely a situation whereby

ordinary citizens and/or civil society

organizations participate directly or

indirectly in exacting accountability. Such

accountability is sometimes referred to it as

society driven horizontal accountability

The term social accountability is, in a sense,

a misnomer since it is not meant to refer to a

specific type of accountability, but rather to

a particular approach (or set of mechanisms)

for exacting accountability. Mechanisms of

social accountability can be initiated and

supported by the state, citizens or both, but

very often they are

operate from the bottom-up.

It is generally accepted that social

accountability mechanisms are an example

of vertical accountability. However, a

minority of commentators argue that, with

respect to social accountability, a

hierarchical relationship is generally lacking

between actor and forum, as are any formal

obligations to render account. Giving

account to various stakeholders occurs

basically on a voluntary basis with no

intervention on the part of the principal.

Therefore, social accountability would be a

form of horizontal accountability.

Social accountability initiatives are as varied

and different as participatory budgeting,

administrative procedures acts, social audits,

and citizen report cards which all involve

citizens in the oversight and control of

government. This can be contrasted with

government initiatives or entities, such as

citizen advisory boards, which fulfill public

functions.

Often overlooked in considerations of social

accountability is the role that legislators can

play in providing weight to such grass roots

accountability mechanisms. For example, a

Member of Parliament can represent the

concerns of his/her constituents by

questioning a Minister during Question

Period in Parliament or by requesting

information directly from a government

ministry or department.

Diagonal Accountability

The concept of diagonal accountability is far

from settled with two groups of

commentators adopting different definitions.

The literature does not support a

convergence of their ideas. Although, there

is conjecture as to what constitutes diagonal

accountability, the prevailing view is that

diagonal accountability entails vertical

accountability actors. Generally speaking

diagonal accountability seeks to engage

citizens directly in the workings of

horizontal accountability institutions. This

is an effort to augment the limited

effectiveness of civil society’s watch dog

function by breaking the state’s monopoly

over responsibility for official executive

oversight.

The main principles of diagonal

accountability are:

􀂃

Mechanisms

participate in institutions of horizontal

accountability, rather than creating

distinct and separate institutions of

diagonal accountability. In this way,

agents of vertical accountability seek to

insert themselves more directly into the

horizontal axis.

Participate in Horizontal Accountability– Community advocates

􀂃

advocates are given an opportunity to

access information about government

agencies that would normally be limited

to the horizontal axis, for instance

internal performance reviews etc.

Furthermore, they have access to the

deliberations and reasons why

horizontal accountability institutions

make the decisions they do. Meanwhile,

community advocates bring first hand

experience about the performance of the

government agency to the accountability

process.

􀂃

Community advocates co-opt the

horizontal accountability institution’s

authority to compel a government

agency to answer questions (as in the

example given above of an MP

questioning a Minister about issues of

concern to his/her constituents); and

Compel Officials to Answer –

􀂃

advocates acquire the authority of the

horizontal accountability institution to

enforce the findings or influence elected

officials.

Some argue that civil society can strengthen

the effectiveness of horizontal accountability

institutions by pressuring existing agencies

to do their jobs more effectively. This type

of participation in accountability is not

direct action against wrongdoing, as with

vertical accountability, but rather society driven

horizontal accountability, such as

citizen advisory boards that fulfill public

functions, like auditing government

expenditures or supervising procurement.

More generally, active citizens and civil

society groups can work with elected

representatives to enhance parliaments’

representation role.

A minority of commentators diverge in their

opinion as to what constitutes diagonal

accountability. Some commentators suggest

administrative accountability, exercised

primarily through quasi-legal forums, such

as ombudsmen, auditors, and independent

inspectors reporting directly or indirectly to

parliament or the responsible minister, is a

form of independent and external

administrative and financial oversight and

control. This form of accountability is

different to the classic top-down/ principal agent

relationship because the administrative

accountability institution is not in a

hierarchical relationship to the public

officials and often do not have formal

powers to coerce public officials into

compliance. It is argued that these

administrative agents are auxiliary forums of

accountability that were instituted to help

the political principals control the great

variety of administrative agents and that

their accountability relations are, therefore, a

form of diagonal accountability.

Social Accountability versus Diagonal

Accountability

Recently the World Bank argued that social

accountability is broad enough to encompass

mechanisms of diagonal accountability. It

was argued that diagonal accountability

mechanisms can also be considered a form

of social accountability.

Considering social accountability is not

meant to refer to a specific type of

accountability, but rather to a particular

approach for exacting accountability, it

might be a broader concept than diagonal

accountability. This lends weight to the idea

that diagonal accountability mechanisms

could be a component of the broader

approach of social accountability.

However, this is contrast to some

commentators who draw a sharp distinction

between social accountability and diagonal

accountability. They argue that the state is

often resistant to citizens poaching its

exclusive oversight domain, instead

encouraging new forms of social

accountability, which they dismiss as being

merely a form of outreach that provides an

opportunity for civil society to inform

government about public perception of

government behavior.

Conclusion

Parliaments are key actors in what has been

termed the ‘chain of accountability’. They

are, along with the judiciary, the key

institution of horizontal accountability, not

only in their own right but also as the

institution to which many autonomous

accountability institutions report. They are

the vehicle through which political

accountability is exercised. Along with civil

society organizations and the mass media,

they are also important institutions in

vertical accountability.

Newer concepts of accountability have

emerged: social accountability and diagonal

accountability. The former, defined as

‘society driven horizontal accountability’

seeks to provide direct answerability from

government to citizens; parliaments and

elected representatives are important

vehicles through which citizens and civic

groups can also extract enforcement. And –

no matter how defined – parliaments are one

of the institutions through which diagonal

accountability can be exercised.

Public trust must be consistently earned for a politician to be effective.  Ongoing accountability defines the evolution of the relationship between the politician and the public
While politicians will claim that they are accountable at each election, in fact the authors propose that public accountability is ongoing and not just a rare event every four years.  Public trust must be consistently earned for a politician to be effective.  Ongoing accountability defines the evolution of the relationship between the politician and the public.
Suppose you see a man rowing a boat out on a lake, against a wind.   He is making no headway in relation to the land.  Is this because he doesn’t know how to row properly, or because he isn’t motivated enough, or is it simply that the wind is too strong?
To be fair in judging an elected representative’s performance, and to know how much to trust that person in their work, we need a reasonable understanding of the person’s ability, motivation and external constraints standing in the way of doing a better job.  We need to know what they intend to achieve and why, their performance standards and what they think they accomplished and learned. This doesn’t come from political party leaflets written for election campaigns.  It comes from what the person formally tells us through their own accountability reports.
Why the emphasis on personal accountings as a means of building the public’s trust?  First, it can be done without restriction. Giving full and fair accounting to constituents is not something that must first be required by legislation or approved by a political party. The discipline of public reporting will encourage politicians to inform themselves in meeting the standards and objectives they set for themselves and standards reasonably expected of them. It will also help their  staff understand what is expected of them as support. The concept of public accountability is also basic to the elected representative’s job in overseeing government –- requiring the executive and civil service to account publicly, fully and fairly. Lastly, public accounting doesn’t just give citizens useful information they wouldn’t otherwise get. It creates a self-regulating influence on those with important responsibilities that works in the public interest. Good accounting lets constituents better understand and appreciate a politician’s best efforts in making headway.
Accountability means the obligation to explain fully and fairly how responsibilities are being carried out. Where responsibilities affect the public, there must be  accounting to the public as well.  Both observed performance and accountings for it can then be compared by citizens against fair expectations. This is basically a citizen audit process that can show up vagueness, spin or activity portrayed as accomplishment.
Elected representatives must explain their intentions, external constraints and performance standards, and their actual performance as they see it. Some elected representatives already do this. But the reporting process needs to be structured to cover main responsibilities and reasonable performance standards that citizens are entitled to see met.
Here are some suggestions for elected representatives in developing regular accountings to their constituents.
State your mandate and objectives. The party’s election campaign will produce a platform of promises and changes. These will be within existing legal frameworks, or must state your party’s intention to change them, and why. From this follows your statement of personal intentions and objectives for your term in office, and what you think your constituents can reasonably expect of you.
State your performance standards.  Since elected representatives are society leaders, a key component of an accountability report is intended personal conduct at a professional standard. Tell constituents the standards you expect to meet in your values, ethics and committee participation, and your availability to meet or talk in consultation with constituents.
Adequately informing yourself on issues and options is a major responsibility for all elected representatives. Thus for each proposal coming before you, get the information you need to fairly explain who would benefit, how, and why they should, and who would bear what costs and risks and why they should, in both the short and longer term. This is a new and disciplined approach to building credibility. The idea is to be able to tell your constituents before the fact the basis for your intended decision and your diligence in reaching your decision.
How you manage your legislative and constituency offices is another key component of performance. For example, standards include how and when you will regularly inform and consult, your response times for letters, emails, phone calls, and hours of operation. You are responsible for having your office staff meet the standards you set.
Oversight. Elected representatives have the role of overseeing the executive government on citizens’ behalf. You must understand what the government intends to achieve, why, and the processes of control needed to ensure that what should be accomplished is, and that what shouldn’t happen, doesn’t. Citizens can reasonably expect you to have a basic understanding of the critical success factors for effective management control. “Horror story” failures in government management illustrate the need for this understanding.
Fair public challenge.  Fair judgment of politicians needs a reasonable understanding of their contexts and valid performance indicators, not speculation and gossip. Your public accountings will be challenged by people in opposition.  Party messages and language for general letters, flyers and websites do not stand in the way of full and fair accounting to both constituents and riding association officials. True public accountability is nonpartisan.
The Internet is already producing greater useful disclosure. Today there will be a photo, a recording, a video or computer-assisted networking to bring out the truth. So a forthright explanation ahead of time will earn public trust. Justification attempts after the truth gets out will not. The need for full and fair public explanation is by no means new, but the idea of requiring it before the fact is new for achieving greater fairness in society.. Elected representatives’ own initiatives in their personal accountings and in requiring adequate public accountings from government will be a major step forward. 

Improving Public Trust in Politicians

The Issue of Public Accountability: a Summary for Citizens

 

The Issue of Public Accountability: a Summary for Citizens

Authorities such as governments, their agencies and large corporations affect citizens in important ways. If they are required to explain their action intentions, reasons and their intended performance standards publicly, fully and fairly, we will see increased fairness in society and reduced harm.
The purpose of this web site is first to show citizens, elected representatives and authorities why we need full and fair accounting from authorities. Secondly it is to show how citizens and elected representatives can achieve public accounting that meets a standard of public explanation that citizens have the right to see met.

The Need for Public Accountability
Any survey tracking citizen protest and distrust of the intentions and performance of authorities will show citizens failing to win the battle for fairness. In every society we have authorities' driving forces largely unknown to citizens until they are launched. If we then think their intentions will lead to harm, it will usually be too late to stop them. Outcries after the fact do not help. We lack effective processes to prevent authorities' intentions from leading to harm. Citizens placing blind trust in authorities simply condones a syndrome that citizens have allowed. .
Alerts by public interest organizations, internet exchanges, journalists' columns, protest letters to the editor and hitting the streets obviously contribute to fairness. But they cannot by themselves be expected to change underlying agendas of those in power when authorities' intentions, if known, would be fairly seen by citizens as leading to harm.
We have failed to require what George Washington in a 1796 letter said was needed: "I am sure the mass of Citizens in these United States mean well, and I firmly believe they will always act well, whenever they can obtain a right understanding of matters...." Washington spoke for all societies.
In particular, we have failed to obtain from authorities what Dr. Ursula Franklin in her 1989 Massey Lectures said we need: " Whenever someone talks to you about the benefits and costs of a particular project, don't ask "What benefits?" ask "Whose benefits and whose costs?"
We have failed to impose on authorities a self-regulating influence on their decision-making that has always been available to us. That force is the requirement that authorities explain publicly, fully and fairly what they intend and why they intend it. The essence of public accountability is not after-the-fact published financial statements. Full and fair public explanation before the fact allows citizens and their elected representatives to act sensibly to commend, alter or halt the intentions.
Public accountability is not something to leave with academics. Suppose you are asked, about an authority that affects you or your loved ones or other citizens in important ways: "How comfortable are you with not knowing what the authority intends, why it intends it and the performance standards it intends, and that you won't know until it happens?" How would you answer?
Moreover, if you are concerned about an issue but lack before-the-fact knowledge, do you think you can act sensibly and effectively to commend, alter or halt the authority's intention? And if you are a member of an authority's governing body, do you think it is fair to deny citizens this knowledge?
To install public accountability we first need a common understanding of the term. The many different and unchallenged definitions of accountability now widespread help to fog a simple concept. This allows authorities to avoid their obligation to publicly explain their intentions and be ready to have their true intentions grasped and publicly debated.


The Meaning of Public Accountability
Public accountability means the obligation of authorities to explain publicly, fully and fairly, before and after the fact, how they are carrying out responsibilities that affect the public in important ways.
These explanations, if publicly and objectively validated for their fairness and completeness, will produce not only useful information for citizens but also a beneficial self-regulating influence on the decisions of authorities.
Holding to account means obtaining from authorities the public explanations we need at the time we need them, validating the reporting for its fairness and completeness and doing something sensible and fair with explanations given in good faith.
Standards of leader performance in society fall because no one has the duty to uphold performance standards that affect the public in important ways, and no one is held effectively to account.
The requirement that decision-makers publicly explain their intentions and meet an agreed standard of explanation does more than produce useful information that citizens would not otherwise have. It creates an important self-regulating influence on authorities' intentions and actions. Unless they are arrogant, authorities made to explain publicly will want to say something praiseworthy. But if they lie about their intentions or later their results, they can be exposed through public audit by knowledgeable public interest organizations. When those organizations validate the fairness and completeness of what authorities report, officials who mislead can lose public credibility and see their intentions self-destruct.
For every major responsibility affecting the public there is accountability. The public explanation obligation attaches to all important responsibilities in society -- safety, health, social and legal justice, the environment and others. Governments, corporations and other institutions affect people's lives across the planet, and examples of evaded accounting are legion. For example, we see misuse of public money; refusal to uphold the precautionary principle in safety, health and environmental protection; unfettered international arms sales; and corporate attempts to govern farmers' crops and override nations' own core policies. Even at a local level we see major infrastructure decisions made by officials who have not informed themselves adequately, or property development decisions based on councillors' individual whims.
Given that full and fair public accounting is an imperative if society is to work properly, this fact raises the question whether the governing bodies of authorities know their commonsense obligation to publicly account but simply evade it. It may also be that they honestly do not understand how it applies to them in their jobs. Yet in well-run business organizations, accountability is well understood and applied because the obligation to explain intended and actual achievement can be expected to increase the performance of those having the responsibilities.


The State We're In
Public accountability is a simple yet powerful obligation but it has not been grasped and installed as a regulator of fairness by citizens and their elected representatives.
We have never required adequate public explanation from authorities. One reason is that most citizens confuse the meaning of public accountability (the obligation to explain intentions, performance standards, results of action taken and how the available learning has been applied) with responsibility, the obligation to act. Authorities may purposefully encourage this confusion to cause citizens and their elected representatives to concentrate only on rules for officials' conduct that then require external examiners. This diverts attention from officials' obligations to explain intentions and reasoning before the fact. We therefore forego the self-regulating influence that the public accounting requirement produces, and we fail to get the information we need. when we need it, to sensibly decide our trust in authorities.
The obligation to publicly account cannot be refused in a democracy. Officials cannot reject their accounting obligation because it is nonpartisan, tells no one how to do their job and is simply the obligation to explain intentions and performance. Nor is public accounting costly. Public explanations require no more information than officials need themselves to do their jobs properly. And what they know, they can report.
The question is whether citizens wish to make use of available means to force public accountings to gain both a 'right understanding of matters' and the self-regulating influence. Thus far the famous observation of the cartoon character Pogo has given us the answer: "We have met the enemy, and he is us." For example, citizens allow authorities to maintain barriers in the way of legislating true accountability, and allow too many authorities to act as if they had power of attorney. Citizens have yet to set basic performance and public accounting standards for authorities, and standards for public validation of what authorities say.
Nor have citizens set performance and public accounting standards for their elected representatives that would encourage them to hold executive governments fairly and effectively to account. Elected representatives are themselves publicly accountable for their own diligence, which includes how well they inform themselves for their responsibilities.
Perhaps the main reason we lack full and fair public accounting in the law is because the legislating bodies responsible for installing it do not want it and we have not made them install it. Thus we find governing bodies asserting that they are "fully accountable" when all they mean is that they intend to take their responsibilities seriously - something they are obliged by law to do in any case.

What Citizens Can Do
It is no good judging the actions of government, corporate or other officials after the fact -- even with the help of hindsight audit -- when it is too late for anything but recrimination and blame. Moreover, the blame will usually be directed to employees, not to the ultimately responsible and accountable governing bodies as the directing minds of the authorities. We need the governing bodies to explain publicly, fully and fairly what they intend and why they intend it. We need them to tell us the performance standards they have set for themselves and those they oversee.
We can think of activist citizens as 'society doctors.' Just as we have general practictioner doctors who diagnose illness, we have citizens who detect suspect intentions of authorities and alert others. And just as we have emergency-room doctors who intervene when harm has already happened, we have citizens who shift into 'action stations' such as hitting the streets to try to halt intentions already launched. But where are the society doctors who work on prevention - who set the public accounting requirements that help prevent intentions and actions leading to harm and waste? We need citizens as 'prevention doctors' to bring about the self-regulating influence.
Note that preventive citizen action is needed to protect existing core policies of a country, such as Medicare in Canada. Erosion of Medicare aims by profit-seekers must be prevented. Lawsuits and hitting the streets may be necessary, but they may not be sufficient when authorities with suspect intentions wield more sustained power than concerned citizens.
The famous American social psychologist Kurt Lewin argued that it is better to act to reduce driving forces than try to crank up restraining forces. Restraining forces can be overwhelmed by cranked-up driving forces. But the self-regulating effect of the public accountability obligation on authorities acts to reduce ill-intentioned driving forces.
It is open to citizens to hold to account by moving beyond a tendency to simply 'awfulize' about issues to whoever will listen and then either to defer to authorities or hit the streets. It is open to the large public interest organizations to hold authorities publicly to account on behalf of citizens, and not just alert and lobby. Giving valuable public warnings about authorities' apparent intentions helps to create a restraining 'climate of opinion.' But that takes time and will not necessarily assure change in powerful authorities' underlying agendas and actions. Without holding publicly and fairly to account, citizens' urgings and demands can be treated by authorities as nothing more than supplication.
But if citizens are to do their civic duty to achieve and maintain control of authorities, they need to know how to hold to account. Yet they have had no instruction in this. Academics have not taken on this teaching role despite being the 'scouts for society,' and for their part activist organizations may not be attracted by the cold logic of holding to account. Yet holding to account publicly and relentlessly can force exposure of harmful intentions that can then cause them to self-destruct. We need to hold to account publicly and fairly before hitting the streets.
Citizens themselves can create processes for holding effectively to account, and it is not complicated. The processes can be developed community-wide, nationwide and even worldwide through internet exchanges of strategies.


Holding to Account
Groups of concerned citizens can start by sitting around kitchen tables to identify who in common sense has what important responsibilities in the issues they are concerned about. As a citizen accountability group they then identify what the basic performance standards of the authority should be, and the nature of the public explanations authorities should be giving on how they are carrying out their responsibilities. The group then proposes basic responsibilities and reporting obligations to the authority's governing body and asks for its response. If necessary, citizens can act relentlessly and publicly to force the response because the obligation to account cannot be rejected.
The group then publicly assesses the governing body's response against what they think are reasonable standards for the board's explanation of its intentions, reasons and performance standards. Each round of questioning will improve citizens' ability to hold to account.
Media are needed for support, but to the extent that media refuse to cover citizens' legitimate and useful accountability expectations, the internet will be needed. While messages on it are not laid in front of citizens as are newspapers and magazines, it is s good connecter of ideas and strategies.
In their areas of concern, citizens' groups can then identify what needs to be legislated as public accounting standards and ask their elected representatives to state whether they agree. Citizens can ask their legislators what they are prepared to do to install the legislation, and publicize the responses they get.
As to the conduct of large transnational corporations, it may seem daunting to lawmakers of a country to try to regulate it. But it is not beyond sovereign governments' powers to enact laws requiring corporate boards operating in their jurisdictions to explain publicly, fully and fairly their intentions and reasoning when what they intend would affect their own and other countries in important ways. Again, it is only the requirement to explain, but once authorities are required by law to publicly account to a standard, what they say can be publicly audited.
Because the public accounting obligation cannot be rejected in countries calling themselves democracies, the large public interest organizations and NGOs have the collective power to force the public explanations. They also have the collective knowledge to publicly validate corporations' required reporting.
Among countries, the United Nations can set basic standards for countries to explain their intentions fully and fairly to the other countries they affect or plan to affect. The UN can add to its work independent audit of the fairness and completeness of the accountings.
The adequacy of after-the-fact financial reporting is less important, despite the Enrons of the world, but even that can be improved by legislation making authorities' governing bodies as the directing minds (not just employee executive officers) meet public explanation standards that citizens have the right to see met.
****
For those citizens, elected representatives, governing bodies and public interest organization members who wish to know more about public accountability, this web site explains the concepts, principles and standards of public accountability and how to hold to account.
Holding publicly to account - that is, exacting the needed public explanations and auditing them -- is a productive and rewarding task for achieving fairness in society and saving lives. It is an adventure, not a chore.

Accountability and Transparency

 

Accountability and Transparency: Essential Principles

"A popular Government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own Governors must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives."
"...[T]he concentration of power and the subjection of individuals will increase amongst democratic nations... in the same proportion as their ignorance."


If citizens are to govern their own affairs, either directly or through representative government, they must be informed about how best to determine their affairs and how best to represent and execute
them.




In a democracy, the principle of accountability holds that government officials—whether elected or appointed by those who have been elected—are responsible to the citizenry for their decisions and actions. Transparency requires that the decisions and actions of those in government are open to public scrutiny and that the public has a right to access such information. Both concepts are central to the very idea of democratic governance. Without accountability and transparency, democracy is impossible. In their absence, elections and the notion of the will of the people have no meaning, and government has the potential to become arbitrary and self-serving.


The People's Right to Know
Elections are the primary means for citizens to hold their country's officials accountable for their actions in office, especially when they have behaved illegally, corruptly, or ineptly while carrying out the work of the government. But for elections—and the people's will—to be meaningful, basic rights must be protected and affirmed, such as with a Bill of Rights, as in the United States. James Madison, the author of the U.S. Bill of Rights, believed that the very basis for government's responsiveness was the assurance that citizens would have sufficient knowledge to direct it. If citizens are to govern their own affairs, either directly or through representative government, they must be informed about how best to determine their affairs and how best to represent and execute them. If citizens are not well informed, they can neither act in their own self-interest, broadly speaking, nor have any serious choice in elections, much less offer themselves as candidates.


A free press is the essential guarantor of the public's access to information. The press must, therefore, have broad protection against infringements of its rights, and must be able to search out information when the public interest is concerned. Of course, the people themselves must also have the right to know about government proceedings and the right to gain access to government information. Interestingly, though, such rights have been entrenched in the laws of most democracies only during the last 50 years. When U.S. president Lyndon Johnson signed the precedent-setting Freedom of Information Act in 1966, he stated:

"[T]his legislation springs from one of our most essential principles: a democracy works best when the people have all the information that the security of the nation permits. No one should be able to pull the curtains of secrecy around decisions which can be revealed without injury to the public interest."

Absent these instruments for accountability and transparency, government is likely to succumb to corruption; this has occurred throughout history when no controls have been placed on governmental powers and leaders have sought only to retain power.


Separation of Powers
Accountability also involves the separation of powers, which is the principle that no branch of government may dominate another, and that each branch has the power to check fundamental abuses by other branches. Congress's authority granted by the U.S. Constitution, for example, gives it the power to hold other branches accountable for breaches of the public's trust through impeachment and expulsion. U.S. federal courts, especially the Supreme Court, have the authority to judge the constitutionality of congressional laws and officials' actions. Parliamentary systems do not have the separation of powers in the same way, since the executive branch is appointed by the legislature. In such systems, standards of accountability are established through tradition, laws, and oversight by an independent judiciary, public commissions, and a free press.
The U.S. system of government provides for an additional separation of powers with the guarantee that states should have the responsibility to govern unless otherwise specified as part of the national government's powers. A similar principle is subsidiarity, found in the laws of the European Union (EU) and in the doctrine of the Catholic Church. This is the notion that decisions should be made at the lowest level of government possible so that citizens are close to the decision-making structures, thereby allowing for greater accountability.
The Advantages of Democracy over Dictatorship
Governments that are truly accountable can more effectively prevent corruption, which involves the use of positions of power or privilege for personal enrichment. Indeed, corruption is possible in all systems of government, and democracies are not immune from it. Still, democracies have several advantages in dealing with corruption. One advantage is that elected representatives in a democracy have a direct relationship with the country's citizens, whose votes encourage the winner to act honestly in representing the people's will. Indeed, the various laws, constitutional provisions, and internal regulations found in democracies reflect the idea that those who work for the government, whether appointed, elected, or hired, owe a high level of accountability to the public.
By contrast, dictatorships have no such protections or safeguards. Leaders in a dictatorship do not have the same incentives as leaders in a democracy to avoid violating the law and abusing power to their own advantage. The 2007 Corruption Perceptions Index compiled by Transparency International (TI), a global organization committed to fighting corruption, demonstrates how corruption can correlate with dictatorship. Among the 30 countries ranked least corrupt by TI (out of a total of 180), 28 are categorized as "free," 2 are "partly free," and 0 are "not free" in Freedom House's Freedom in the World 2007 survey. Among the bottom 30, 11 are listed as "partly free" and 19 as "not free" by Freedom House.
Representative Organizations in Civil Society
Other institutions, including the private groups and organizations that operate under public laws, also need standards of accountability and transparency. Trade unions, corporations, humanitarian organizations, schools, hospitals, political parties, and other voluntary organizations all must operate under laws and regulations designed to ensure that the interests of their members and the general public are properly served, and that these institutions do not violate the public's trust. In dictatorships, such organizations are often state instruments that exist to steal money or create wealth for the ruler's closest associates.






Citizen Oversight in Athenian Democracy
One of the most notable achievements of Athenian democracy in ancient times was its establishment of civilian oversight of public funds and the wealth and incomes of all public figures (including generals), so that they did not benefit from their public positions. Auditors, financial controllers of the treasury, and judges were chosen annually by lot. This system of accountability stood in stark contrast with nearly all other governments in the ancient world, most of which were despotic and marked by corruption, personal enrichment, and aggrandizement.
Two Precedents of Accountability
In England, the Magna Carta, which was signed in 1215, introduced the first standards of accountability in government by forcing King John to accept the basic principle that taxes should not be raised without first consulting his wealthy subjects. Representative councils had to be called to review the monarchy's expenditures. From this grew a form of constitutional monarchy in which parliament asserted increasingly greater powers. Three centuries after the Magna Carta, in 1517, another precedent was set when Martin Luther posted the Ninety-five Theses on the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany. The theses challenged the selling of indulgences (absolution from sin) by the Church, a practice widely used for priestly and papal enrichment. In challenging both the spiritual and the temporal authority of the pope, Luther was asserting the right of believers to accountability. In doing so, he sparked the Protestant Reformation, marking a division within Christianity between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.
Embedded in the Constitution
With the rise of representative government, accountability and transparency became much broader in scope, encompassing not just what leaders owed abstractly to the nation or the commonwealth, but what they owed specifically to the citizenry. As an expression of the people's will, government is accountable to all of the country's citizens. In the United States, concepts of accountability and transparency are embedded in the Constitution, its provisions often directly responding to prior abuses of the British crown, such as arbitrary arrests and property confiscations. The U.S. Constitution requires the legislative and executive branches to publish laws, regulations, and proceedings. It also requires the president to report periodically to Congress on the state of the union and to fully account for the national government's expenditures. In this way, the public is made aware of the government's actions.
The Powers of Congress
In the United States, in addition to the voters' power through elections, Congress has the power to impeach and convict the president and other federal officials, such as judges, in cases of "treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors." But in matters of corruption, until the late 1800s, there were few controls over U.S. government officials beyond ineffective antibribery statutes. In this early period, government operated according to the spoils system, in which the winner doled out jobs according to party and candidate loyalty, not by merit. The first comprehensive civil service law, the Pendleton Act, was passed only in 1883 following President James Garfield's assassination by a disgruntled office seeker. The Pendleton Act established minimum standards for federal employment, competence and qualification examinations for employment, a merit-based promotional system, and job and pay classifications within the civil service. The act still forms the basis for civil service standards today.
Laws designed to ensure public access to information include the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), passed in 1966, and the Ethics in Government Act, passed in 1978. The Ethics Act was passed in the wake of the Watergate scandal, the most significant constitutional crisis in U.S. history. It involved illegal activities ordered by President Richard Nixon, who sought to weaken his political opponents and secure reelection and then attempted to cover up the crimes. The crisis also involved the president's protracted challenges to the authority of Congress and the judiciary. In the end, Congress, the media, the public, and even the Supreme Court joined to expose the scope of the president's transgressions, forcing him to resign from office.
The Role of the Media
The role of the media in the Watergate scandal is well-known. It reflects the importance of the media in exposing wrongdoing and keeping the public informed of the actions of government and elected officials. Until 1964, however, the media's powers were very fragile. Two U.S. Supreme Court decisions have been essential in strengthening the media's position. New York Times v. Sullivan (1964) and The Pentagon Papers Case (1971), also involving the New York Times, strengthened the media's rights to obtain information from government, publish material about officials (even if not fully accurate), and print materials the government has kept secret from the public. Nevertheless, journalists often find themselves in conflict with government and legal authorities over protecting sources of classified or sensitive information, especially if the sources are government employees who have committed themselves to secrecy. In such cases, journalists are subject to imprisonment. Recently, a New York Times reporter went to jail for 85 days for not revealing a source to whom she had promised secrecy. In response, several news organizations renewed their efforts to adopt a national shield law that would protect journalists from having to reveal their sources in criminal or federal cases (several states have such shield laws).

It is clear, however, that corruption and the lack of accountability have been important factors in world events.

It is clear, however, that corruption and the lack of accountability have been important factors in world events.

It is clear, however, that corruption and the lack of accountability have been important factors in world events.

  "It is clear, however, that corruption and the lack of accountability have been important factors in world events. "

Beyond the U.S.
Today, most democracies (presidential, parliamentary, or mixed) have established principles of accountability.


Western European countries, most of which have parliamentary systems, began to adopt domestic legislation for accountability and transparency in the 1950s. Accountability and transparency are basic qualifications for membership in both the Council of Europe and the EU. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has adopted standards and proposes model legislation to govern institutions, such as corporations, nonprofit organizations, and trade unions. The United Kingdom has also enacted comprehensive freedom of information legislation for the public sector.


Elsewhere in the world, the achievement of accountability and transparency in government has been mixed. Whereas many democratic countries have moved decisively to end corruption and introduce concepts of accountability, many other countries remain mired in dictatorship and crime. It is clear, however, that corruption and the lack of accountability have been important factors in world events. "People power" was the term used to describe the hundreds of thousands of people who demonstrated in the Philippines in 1986, forcing the corrupt government of Ferdinand Marcos to resign (see County Study of the Philippines below). Recently, corruption was a significant issue in the formation of popular movements against nondemocratic governments in Serbia (2000), Georgia (2003), and Ukraine (2004). In many countries, the public's disgust at pervasive corruption has been a force for democratization. With the establishment of new democratic institutions, there is a potential to institute more open and effective procedures to deal with corruption, government secrecy, and electoral abuses.