Accountability is a concept in ethics with several meanings. It is often used synonymously with such concepts as answerability, enforcement, responsibility, blameworthiness, liability and other terms associated with the expectation of account-giving. As an aspect of governance, it has been central to discussions related to problems in both the public and private (corporation) worlds.
Accountability is defined as "A is accountable to B when A is obliged to inform B about A’s (past or future) actions and decisions, to justify them, and to suffer punishment in the case of eventual misconduct" [1].
In leadership roles, accountability is the acknowledgement and assumption of responsibility for actions, products, decisions, and policies including the administration, governance and implementation within the scope of the role or employment position and encompassing the obligation to report, explain and be answerable for resulting consequences.
Etymology
The word "accountability" is an extension of the terminology used in the money lending systems that first developed in Ancient Greece and later, Rome. One would borrow money from a Money lender, be that a local Temple or Merchant, and would then be held responsible to their account with that party. Responsibility is also a close synonym.
Tradition
The idea of accountability has been introduced throughout recorded history. Perhaps the first written statement of accountability is in the Code of Hammurabi. Upon this tablet, Hammurabi describes certain undesirable actions that may occur within society and the consequences as he saw fit. One example:
"If a man uses violence on another man's wife to sleep with her, the man shall be killed, but the wife shall be blameless."
The concept to be illustrated is that Hammurabi and other sources do not state that any given action or inaction is illegal, but address any ambiguity on the consequences of these actions. Other examples can be found in the Bible and the Quaran.
Types of accountability
Categorized by Bruce Stone and O.P. Dwivedi and Joseph G. Jabbra, there are 8 types of accountability, namely, moral, administrative, political, managerial, market, legal/judicial, constituency relation, and professional accountability.
Moral Accountability
It is the root of all types or mechanisms of accountability which the standard of assessment which base on traditional and societal norms and behavior. Citizens believe morality, entails personality and intensions and only moral individuals constitute the government can the government strive for the good for citizens. Consider the “Lewinsky Scandal” at the second-term presidency of Bill Clinton; he was publicly criticized for the extra-marital affair and an impeachment motion was introduced in the Congress. Yet, he acquitted from the motion and completed the remaining term. A constraint of moral accountability is that by moral accountability itself cannot legitimately impose answerability and enforcement but merely a “conscience call” and have to incorporate other types of mechanisms in order to hold one accountable; for instance, the involvement of Congress in the abovementioned case, as the Congress possess legitimate power, stated in the constitution of the US, to hold the president accountable.
Political Accountability
The case in which the Congress, or the legislature, held other civil servant accountable is part of political accountability. Mechanisms of political accountability are vested in constitution, either written or unwritten, or statute and implemented in three dimensions: election, legislature and ministerial.
Election is the most direct way for accountability, and is a way for enforcement. An election gives a chance for the proposed cabinet and proposed legislators to run for campaigns and attend forums so as to explain and inform their purposes and goals if they are elected. On the other hand, it is also a sanction for those who misbehaved or failed to act as a representative for one’s field in the past tenure – by giving the vote to someone else.
Constitution or equivalents also empowers legislature to hold civil servants accountable. Firstly, legislature may invite public servants for enquiry sessions to explain explicitly planning or policies made, or to unfold any misappropriates. Further, legislature can organize an investigation committee for particular issue by inviting outsiders as committees. Abovementioned are mechanisms aiming to compel civil servants in to dialogue and hence, gives answerability. It can introduce motions for impeachment and no-confidence in case for misbehavior or misconduct.
Ministers, as conceived as the top of the hierarchy of the ministry, are supposed to hold accountable for every affairs in the ministry; as all civil servant within are merely cogs and wigs and operate in the light of the ministers’ vision. However, ministerial accountability is vague in parliamentary system. The parliamentary have to constitute the cabinet to executive the government, yet, holding the executives accountable as abovementioned.
Administrative Accountability
Internal rules and norms as well as some independent commission are mechanisms to hold civil servant within the administration of government accountable. Within department or ministry, firstly, behavior is bounded by rules and regulations; secondly, civil servants are subordinates in a hierarchy and accountable to the superiors. Nonetheless, there are independent “watchdog” units to scrutinize and hold departments accountable; legitimacy of these commissions is built upon their independency, as it avoids any conflicts of interest. Apart from internal checks, some of “watchdog” units accept complaints from citizens, bridging government and society to hold civil servants accountable to citizens, but not merely governmental departments.
Judicial/legal accountability
Court action and judicial review are two mechanisms for public to appeal for any violation of law and constitution. Moreover, court actions also fill the gap between accountability between executive and legislature; if the executive fail or reluctant to exercise legitimate decision made by legislature, or vice versa, one can appeal through the court and the tribunal base on constitution or equivalents.
Professional accountability
Professional public servants, namely lawyers, doctors and accountants, are also bounded by professional code and norms, which those codes are established in the light of public interest [2]. Professionals are obliged to join correspondent professional societies and vow oaths to be licensed. Professional are therefore accountable to the oath and codes of the societies.
Market Accountability
Under voices for decentralization and privatization of the government, services provided are nowadays more “customer-driven” and should aim to provide convenience and various choices to citizens; with this perspective, there are comparisons and competition between public and private services and this, ideally, improves quality of service. As mentioned by Bruce Stone, the standard of assessment for accountability is therefore “responsiveness of service providers to a body of ‘sovereign’ customers and produce quality service. Outsourcing service is one means to adopt market accountability. Government can choose among a shortlist of companies for outsourced service; within the contracting period, government can hold the company by rewriting contracts or by choosing another company.
Managerialist Accountability
There is a reformative notion towards administration of the government which public servants in a superior position should exert their power and order as a manager in the private sector. Traditional administration is that the superior gives orders accompanied with a set of guidelines, which includes goals, means and ends, for a subordinate to achieve a task. Yet, in a managerialist point of view, manager should provide aims, objectives and goals, as well as designated resources, to subordinates; it emphasis on “a strategic rather then detailed, control" [3]. Accountability is held while the agency undergo self-evaluation, or by evaluation from outsiders.
Constituency Relations
With this perspective, whether a particular agency or the government is being accountable depends on whether voices from agencies, groups or institutions, which is outside the public sector and representing citizens’ interests in a particular constituency or field, are heard. Moreover, the government is obliged to empower members of agencies with political rights to run for elections and be elected; or, appoint them into the public sector as a way to hold the government representative and ensure voices from all constituencies are included in policy-making process.
Social Implications
In politics, and particularly in representative democracies, accountability is an important factor in securing good governance and, thus, the legitimacy of public power. Accountability differs from transparency in that it only enables negative feedback after a decision or action, while transparency also enables negative feedback before or during a decision or action. Accountability constrains the extent to which elected representatives and other office-holders can willfully deviate from their theoretical responsibilities, thus reducing corruption. The relationship of the concept of accountability to related concepts like the rule of law or democracy, however, still awaits further elucidation.
Contemporary Evolution
Accountability involves either the expectation or assumption of account-giving behavior. The study of account giving as a sociological act was recently articulated in a 1968 article on "Accounts" by Marvin Scott and Stanford Lyman and Stephen Soroka [4], although it can be traced as well to J.L. Austin's 1956 essay "A Plea for Excuses," [5] in which he used excuse-making as an example of speech acts.
Communications scholars have extended this work through the examination of strategic uses of excuses, justifications, rationalizations, apologies and other forms of account giving behavior by individuals and corporations, and Philip Tetlock and his colleagues have applied experimental design techniques to explore how individuals behave under various scenarios and situations that demand accountability.
In Britain, accountability has been formally identified by Government since 1995 as one of the Seven Principles of Public Life[6]: "Holders of public office are accountable for their decisions and actions to the public and must submit themselves to whatever scrutiny is appropriate to their office." The goal of accountability is at times in tension with the goal of leadership. A constituency may have short-term desires which are at odds with long-term interests. It has also been argued that accountability provides in certain situations an escape route for ministers to avoid the consequences of ministerial responsibility, which would require resignation.[7]
Recently, accountability has become an important topos in the discussion about the legitimacy of international institutions. [8]
In another view, accountability is a simple word that, at its root, means: "the willingness to stand up and be counted -- as part of a process, activity or game." In this sense, then, accountability is less something I'm held to, or something done to me; rather, it is a word reflecting personal choice and willingness to contribute to an expressed or implied outcome.
Accountability is becoming an increasingly important issue for the non-profit world. Several NGOs signed the "accountability charter" in 2005. In the Humanitarian field, initiatives such as the HAPI (Humanitarian Accountability Partnership International) appeared. Individual NGOs have set their own accountability systems (for example, the ALPS, Accountability, Learning and Planning System of ActionAid)
References
^ Schedler, Andreas (1999). "Conceptualizing Accountability", in Andreas Schedler, Larry Diamond, Marc F. Plattner: The Self-Restraining State: Power and Accountability in New Democracies. London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, pp. 13-28. ISBN 1-55587-773-7.
^ Dwivedi, O. P. (1989). in Joseph G. Jabbra: Public Service Accountability: A Comparative Perspective. West Hartford, Conn.: Kumarian Press, pp. 1-10. ISBN 0783775814.
^ Stone, Bruce. "Administrative Accountability in the 'Westminister' Democracies: Towards a New Conceptual Framework". Governance 8 (4): 505-526. DOI:10.1111/j.1468-0491.1995.tb00225.x. ISSN 1468-0491.
^ Scott, Marvin B.; Lyman, Stanford M. (Feb. 1968). "Accounts". American Sociological Review 33 (1): 46-62. ISSN 0003-1224.
^ Austin, J.L. 1956-7. A plea for excuses. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. Reprinted in J.O. Urmson & G.J. Warnock, eds., 1979, J.L. Austin: Philosophical Papers, 3rd edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 175-204.
^ Standards in Public Life: First Report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life (1995) Cm2850 page 14 text accessed at [1] June 12, 2006
^ Public service Committee, Second report, Ministerial Accountability and Responsibility, Session 1995-6, HC 313.
^ Grant, Ruth W.; Keohane, Robert O. (2005). "Accountability and Abuses of Power in World Politics". American Political Science Review 99 (1): 29-43. DOI:10.1017/S0003055405051476. ISSN 0003-0554.
