Democratic Order, Autonomy, and Accountability

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Olsen, Johan P.
• 署名单位: University of Oslo
• 刊物名称: GOVERNANCE-AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POLICY ADMINISTRATION AND INSTITUTIONS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0952-1895
• DOI: 10.1111/gove.12158
• 发表日期: 2015
• 关键词: public accountability; governance; DYNAMICS; daniel

摘要

Accountability is a principle for organizing relations between rulers and ruled, and making public officials accountable is a democratic achievement. There are, however, competing claims about what is involved in demanding, rendering, assessing, and responding to accounts; what are effective accountability institutions; and how accountability regimes emerge and change. This article provides a frame for thinking about institutional aspects of accountability regimes and their cognitive, normative, and power foundations. A distinction is made between accountability within an established regime with stable power relations and role expectations and accountability as (re) structuring processes in less institutionalized contexts and in transformation periods. A huge literature is concerned with the first issue. There is less attention to accountability as (re) structuring processes. The article, therefore, calls attention to how democracies search for, and struggle over, what are legitimate accountability regimes and political orders.