‘Accountability’: An Ever‐Expanding Concept?
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9299.00218 |
| Date | 01 September 2000 |
| Author | Richard Mulgan |
| Published date | 01 September 2000 |
‘ACCOUNTABILITY’: AN EVER-EXPANDING
CONCEPT?
RICHARD MULGAN
The scope and meaning of ‘accountability’ has been extended in a number of direc-
tions well beyond its core sense of being called to account for one’s actions. It has
been applied to internal aspects of official behaviour, beyond the external focus
implied by being called to account; to institutions that control official behaviour
other than through calling officials to account; to means of making officials respon-
sive to public wishes other than through calling them to account; and to democratic
dialogue between citizens where no one is being called to account. In each case the
extension is readily intelligible because it is into an area of activity closely relevant
to the practice of core accountability. However, in each case the extension of mean-
ing may be challenged as weakening the importance of external scrutiny.
That ‘accountability’ is a complex and chameleon-like term is now a com-
monplace of the public administration literature. A word which a few dec-
ades or so ago was used only rarely and with relatively restricted meaning
(and which, interestingly, has no obvious equivalent in other European lan-
guages (Dubnick 1998, pp. 69–70)) now crops up everywhere performing
all manner of analytical and rhetorical tasks and carrying most of the major
burdens of democratic ‘governance’ (itself another conceptual newcomer).
In the process, the concept of ‘accountability’ has lost some of its former
straightforwardness and has come to require constant clarification and
increasingly complex categorization (Day and Klein 1987; Sinclair 1995).
One sense of ‘accountability’, on which all are agreed, is that associated
with the process of being called ‘to account’ to some authority for one’s
actions (Jones 1992, p. 73). Indeed, this sense may fairly be designated the
original or core sense of ‘accountability’ because it is the sense with the
longest pedigree in the relevant literature and in the understanding of prac-
titioners (Finer 1941, p. 338; Thynne and Goldring 1987, p. 8; Caiden 1988,
p. 25). Such accountability has a number of features: it is external, in that
the account is given to some other person or body outside the person or
body being held accountable; it involves social interaction and exchange,in
that one side, that calling for the account, seeks answers and rectification
while the other side, that being held accountable, responds and accepts
sanctions; it implies rights of authority, in that those calling for an account
are asserting rights of superior authority over those who are accountable,
including the rights to demand answers and to impose sanctions. (The
Richard Mulgan lectures in the Public Policy Program at Australian National University, Canberra
Public Administration Vol. 78 No. 3, 2000 (555–573)
Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street,
Malden, MA 02148, USA.
556 RICHARD MULGAN
inclusion of sanctions in the core of accountability is contestable on the
grounds that it may appear to go beyond the notion of ‘giving an account’.
On the other hand, ‘calling to account’, as commonly understood, appears
incomplete without a process of rectification.)
In the context of a democratic state, the key accountability relationships
in this core sense are those between the citizens and the holders of public
office and, within the ranks of office holders, between elected politicians
and bureaucrats. Core accountability has thus commonly covered issues
such as how voters can make elected representatives answer for their poli-
cies and accept electoral retribution, how legislators can scrutinize the
actions of public servants and make them answerable for their mistakes,
and how members of the public can seek redress from government agencies
and officials. It leads to questions about different channels of accountability
and their relative merits, about the balance between accountability and
efficiency, and about distinctions between political and managerial account-
ability.
But more recently, in academic usage at least, ‘accountability’ has increas-
ingly been extended beyond these central concerns and into areas where
the various features of core ‘accountability’ no longer apply. For instance,
‘accountability’ now commonly refers to the sense of individual responsi-
bility and concern for the public interest expected from public servants
(‘professional’ and ‘personal’ accountability), an ‘internal’ sense which goes
beyond the core external focus of the term. Secondly, ‘accountability’ is also
said to be a feature of the various institutional checks and balances by
which democracies seek to control the actions of the governments
(accountability as ‘control’) even when there is no interaction or exchange
between governments and the institutions that control them. Thirdly,
‘accountability’ is linked with the extent to which governments pursue the
wishes or needs of their citizens (accountability as ‘responsiveness’) regard-
less of whether they are induced to do so through processes of authoritative
exchange and control. Fourthly, ‘accountability’ is applied to the public dis-
cussion between citizens on which democracies depend (accountability as
‘dialogue’), even when there is no suggestion of any authority or subordi-
nation between the parties involved in the accountability relationship.
Linguistic development is not necessarily unhealthy and unbending
resistance to new meanings is generally futile. The main purpose of this
article is to analyse the relentless ramification of ‘accountability’, rather than
to deplore it. Each of the extensions in meaning will be discussed in turn,
with an indication of how it has grown out of the core meaning and can
still be distinguished from that meaning. However, no analysis of account-
ability can pretend to be wholly without ulterior purpose. While many of
the new analyses of accountability have added significantly to the under-
standing of public institutions (Day and Klein 1987; Romzek and Dubnick
1987), others, it will be suggested, by extending the concept of ‘account-
ability’ beyond its accustomed contexts, may involve a degree of unnecess-
Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000
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