Accountability

The word accountability derives from the late Latin (to account), a prefixed form of (to calculate), which in turn is derived from (to reckon). While the word itself does not appear in English until its use in 13th century Norman England, the concept of account-giving has ancient roots in record-keeping activities related to governance and money-lending systems that first developed in Ancient Egypt, Israel, Babylon, Greece, and later Rome. == Accountability modes ==

The scientific literature identifies several forms of accountability, which can be referred to as accountability modes. Examples of these modes include: • administrative accountability, • judicial accountability, • market accountability, and • social accountability. == Administrative Accountability ==

Administrative accountability refers to how public administrators monitor each other through various mechanisms. It includes: • Program accountability, where different actors within the government demand responsibility for results. • Hierarchical accountability, where superiors hold subordinates accountable for delegated duties. Administrative accountability involves both answerability, which aligns actions to principals’ goals, and expectation management, where actors handle multiple stakeholder expectations. == Political accountability==

Political accountability is when a politician makes choices on behalf of the people, and the people have the ability to reward or sanction the politician. In representative democracies, citizens delegate power to elected officials through periodic elections, and such officials are empowered to represent or act in the citizens' interest. Citizens can rely on rewards or sanctions to reward or threaten politicians who might otherwise act in a manner that is antithetical to the people's interest. In electoral replacement, citizens vote to replace representatives who are out of step with their interests. Rational anticipation requires that representatives anticipate the consequences of being out of step with their constituency and then govern in accordance with citizens' wishes to avoid negative consequences. Electoral accountability Electoral accountability refers to citizens using their vote to sanction or reward politicians. Selection—voters choosing candidates based on who will best represent their interests—is another method by which voters hold their representatives accountable. These methods of accountability can occur simultaneously, with voters holding representatives accountable using both sanctioning and selection. These conclusions rely on the assumption that voters do not observe the policy implemented by the incumbent, but do know their own welfare. Some factors make it harder for voters to sanction incumbents. When politicians do not have control over outcomes, it becomes harder to hold them accountable. When voters are better informed about the incumbent's performance, the incumbent is more vulnerable to voter sanctioning. For example, a study of elected versus appointed property assessors in the state of New York shows that the election of property assessors leads to policies that severely undertax wealthier homes relative to poorer homes. Electoral manipulation The role of elections in fostering accountability is often undermined by electoral manipulation and fraud. By preventing citizens from removing leaders through elections based on their performance in office, electoral manipulation breaks down accountability and may undercut the consolidation of democratic institutions. Electoral manipulation is not rare; some estimates are that in the 1990s and 2000s, up to one fourth of elections suffered some form of substantial manipulation. Some efforts to improve accountability by preventing electoral manipulation and fraud have obtained a certain measure of success, such as using cell phone applications for monitoring and disseminating polling station results and employing domestic or international election observers. However, governments may simply alter the type of manipulation or where it occurs in order to deceive observers and monitoring agencies. Low political competition has also been linked to some forms of manipulation, such as abolishing presidential term limits. Well-connected candidates are more likely to resort to vote count fraud. The ability of voters to attribute the credit and blame of outcomes also determines the extent of public goods provision. Research suggests that public goods provision being able to attribute outcomes to politicians as opposed to civil servants. An experiment in New Mexico regarding proposed spending during the state's 2008 special summer legislative session provides evidence that legislators update their positions when learning about voters' policy preferences, indicating that a representative democracy can increase accountability when politicians learn about voters' preferences. Other research indicates that voters use elections to hold politicians accountable for the provision of public goods. In India, rural areas are charged a flat rate for electricity, but in the province of Uttar Pradesh, line loss—electricity that is consumed but not billed—is significantly higher in election years than non-election years, and increases in line loss reliably predict electoral gains. There is evidence that as autocratic governments lose seats in their party's legislatures, they respond by increasing spending on public goods such as education, healthcare, and pensions. For example, the introduction of direct elections for local district office in Indonesia resulted in political interference in the hiring process for bureaucrats in the public education sector, reducing the quality of education provision; politicians were incentivized to dole out patronage positions in the education sector, especially in election years, and where such positions were added, student test scores were lower. == Non-electoral ==

Governments are held accountable if citizens can punish or reward the government to influence it to pursue their best interests. While scholars who study democratic theory emphasize the role of elections in ensuring accountability, another strand of scholars investigates non-electoral forms of accountability in democracies and non-democracies and the conditions that make unelected leaders represent the interests of the general public. Political protests Political changes after protests can be the result of the protests per se, or symptoms of shifts in political preferences underneath the observable phenomena of the protests. One study of the Tea Party movement in the United States has shown that protests per se have an impact on political change. Selectorates Belsky et al. point out that whereas, under more democratic governance, accountability is built into the institution of the state by a habit of regular elections, accountability in autocratic regimes relies on a selectorate—a group that legitimizes or delegitimizes the autocrat's powers according to selectorate theory. Selectorates are those on whom a leader depends in order to hold onto power, and those who have the ability to depose a leader. When a selectorate's hold on power is not overly dependent on the leader in office, selectorates can remove poorly performing leaders, and this accountability by selectorates renders it possible for autocracies to perform better for the benefit of all. One study showed that civil society organizations such as NGOs can increase the performance of local government according to the central government's standards by monitoring and disclosing information about local government performance in authoritarian regimes like China. In Uganda, civil society organizations (CSOs) that divulge to the public how well an incumbent is performing their job duties, in a district with an upcoming competitive election, increase the performance of the politician for the rest of their term. In contrast to these works, a meta-analysis released in 2019 uncovers no effects from CSO voter information campaigns on political accountability after examining the results from seven trials across six countries. In Ghana, election-day monitoring of polling centers for district-level positions, as well as an increase in the awareness of monitoring in an upcoming election, increases job performance among incumbents, who spend more of their annual Constituency Development Fund allocations from the central government on public goods for the electorate. These approval ratings predict election outcomes when combined with other factors included in Bayesian Model Averaging forecasts. In the United States, senator job approval ratings affect whether a senator will retire, the quality of candidates that seek to challenge them, the amount of money the senator can raise to seek reelection if they decide to run, and the outcome of the election itself. Strategic incumbent senators will seek reelection less when their approval ratings are low during their time in office. Shared interests Traditional leaders in Zambia provide local public goods despite the fact that they lack an electoral incentive to do so. Many customary chiefs never leave the communities they lead and depend on local sources for a significant portion of their income; thus, traditional leaders may facilitate bringing in local public goods and benefit from the community's development over time just like stationary bandits in Olson's argument. == Accountability and corruption ==

Political corruption refers to "the misuse or the abuse of public office for private gains". Corrupt practices include fraud, appropriation of public funds, and accepting bribes. Corruption can cause people to negatively evaluate politicians, since citizens may perceive corruption as a signal of poor performance, motivating them to sanction an incumbent. As the model of retrospective voting suggests that voters incentivize good politicians' behavior by rewarding good performance and punishing bad performance, citizens are expected to sanction corrupt politicians. Economic development is associated with a decrease in corruption. There is also evidence about the importance of local media, such as local radio stations, in holding corrupt incumbents accountable and in promoting non-corrupt politicians. Information about corruption may not only lead to vote losses for the incumbent parties, but also for challenging parties, as well the erosion of partisan attachments, which implies that information about corruption also provokes citizens' disengagement from the political process. However, other research shows that increased oversight could increase corruption when actors in one branch can pressure actors in another to collude; in Ghana, bureaucrats are more likely to engage in corruption on behalf of politicians when politicians have higher levels of discretion to oversee the bureaucracy (e.g., by threatening to transfer noncompliant bureaucrats). Low accountability for corruption is difficult to combat, and some anti-corruption activities may also lead to perverse consequences. For example, in places where private sector work pays better than public sector work (e.g., China), highly qualified individuals engaging in public sector work may only find such work attractive because it allows for further compensation through corrupt activities. Government anti-corruption activities can therefore decrease the quality and overall representativeness of the bureaucracy as a result. On the other hand, there is evidence that, despite strategic evasion and unintentional consequences, anti-corruption initiatives are beneficial, as they lower malfeasance and increase social welfare, even where strategic evasion is relatively large. == Police accountability ==

Ethical Within an organization, the principles and practices of ethical accountability aim to improve both the internal standard of individual and group conduct as well as external factors, such as sustainable economic and ecologic strategies. Also, ethical accountability plays an important role in academic fields, such as laboratory experiments and field research. Debates around the practice of ethical accountability on the part of researchers in – whether professional or others – were explored by Norma R.A. Romm in her work on Accountability in Social Research, and elsewhere. Researcher accountability implies that researchers are cognizant of, and take some responsibility for, the potential impact of their ways of doing research – and of writing it up – on the social fields of which the research is part. Accountability is linked to considering carefully, and being open to challenge in relation to, one's choices concerning how research agendas are framed and the styles in which research results are written. Security The traceability of actions performed on a system to a specific system entity (user, process, device) also affects accountability. For example, the use of unique user identification and authentication supports accountability, and the use of shared user IDs and passwords degrades accountability. Individuals within organizations Because many individuals in large organizations contribute in many ways to decisions and policies, it is difficult even in principle to identify who should be accountable for the results. This is what is known, following Dennis F. Thompson, as "the problem of many hands". It creates a dilemma for accountability. If individuals are held accountable or responsible, individuals who could not have prevented the results are either unfairly punished, or they "take responsibility" in a symbolic ritual without suffering any consequences. If only organizations are held accountable, then all individuals in the organization are equally blameworthy or all are excused. Various solutions have been proposed. One is to broaden the criteria for individual responsibility so that individuals are held accountable for not anticipating failures in the organization. Another solution, recently proposed by Thompson, is to hold individuals accountable for the design of the organization, both retrospectively and prospectively. Accountability is an element of a responsibility assignment matrix which indicates who is ultimately answerable for the correct and thorough completion of a deliverable or task, as well as the delegation of the work to those responsible. Public and private overlap With the increase in public service provided by private entities, especially in Britain and the United States, some have called for increased political accountability mechanisms for otherwise non-political entities. Legal scholar Anne Davies, for instance, argues that the line between public institutions and private entities like corporations is becoming blurred in certain areas of public service in the United Kingdom, and that this can compromise political accountability in those areas. She and others argue that some administrative law reform is necessary to address this accountability gap. With respect to the public/private overlap in the United States, public concern over the contracting of government services (including military) and the resulting accountability gap was highlighted following the Nisour Square massacre perpetrated by the Blackwater security firm in Iraq. == In education ==

As defined by National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME), accountability is "[a] program, often legislated, that attributes the responsibility for student learning to teachers, school administrators, or students. Test results typically are used to judge accountability, and often consequences are imposed for shortcomings." Student accountability is traditionally based on school and classroom rules, combined with sanctions for infringement. In contrast, some educational establishments such as Sudbury schools believe that students are personally responsible for their acts, and that traditional schools do not permit students to choose their course of action fully; they do not permit students to embark on the course, once chosen; and they do not permit students to suffer the consequences of the course, once taken. Freedom of choice, freedom of action, freedom to bear the results of action are considered the three great freedoms that constitute personal responsibility. Sudbury schools claim that Ethics' is a course taught by life experience". They adduce that the essential ingredient for acquiring values—and for moral action—is personal responsibility, that schools will become involved in the teaching of morals when they become communities of people who fully respect each other's right to make choices, and that the only way the schools can become meaningful purveyors of ethical values is if they provide students and adults with real-life experiences that are bearers of moral import. Students are given complete responsibility for their own education and the school is run by a direct democracy in which students and staff are equals. ==Media and accountability==

Econometric research has found that countries with greater press freedom tend to have less corruption. Congressmen who receive less press coverage are less likely to produce a positive impact for their constituencies, are less likely to congressional hearings, and federal spending for their district is lower. One explanation for the positive impact of media on accountability stems from Besley and Burgess' work. They argue that media resolves the information asymmetries between citizens and government and provides a way of overcoming obstacles preventing political action. While evidence supports the positive impact of press freedom on political accountability, other work highlights the risk of media capture through factors such as media concentration and ownership as government tools for influencing or controlling news content. Non-democratic regimes use media for a variety of purposes such as – (i) to enhance regime resilience, (ii) censor, or (iii) strategically distract the public. Control of the media may also be especially beneficial to incumbents in new or developing democracies, who consider media control a spoil of office. Various systems have been proposed for increasing the funds available for investigative journalism that allow individual citizens to direct small amounts of government funds to news outlets or investigative journalism projects of their choice. ==Standards==

Accountability standards have been established that organizations can voluntarily commit to. Standards apply in particular to the non-profit world and to Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives. Accountability standards include the: ; INGO Accountability Charter: signed by a large number of NGOs to "demonstrate their commitment to accountability and transparency" ; AccountAbility's AA1000 series: "principles-based standards to help organisations become more accountable, responsible and sustainable. They address issues affecting governance, business models and organizational strategy, as well as providing operational guidance on sustainability assurance and stakeholder engagement" ; Humanitarian Accountability Partnership 2010 standards: for humanitarian organizations to help them "design, implement, assess, improve and recognize accountable programmes" In addition, some non-profit organizations set up their own commitments to accountability: ; Accountability, Learning and Planning System (ALPS) by ActionAid: a framework that sets out key accountability requirements, guidelines, and processes ==See also==