Locating Accountability: One or Many?

Abstract

Accountability for collective actions gives rise to a recurring problem of whether accountability should be concentrated or diffused. Is such accountability more effective when it is clearly located with one person or body, such as a president, a minister or chief executive, who can speak on behalf of the collectivity? Or should accountability be dispersed among the various individuals and groups, including rank-and-file officials, who have contributed to the collective action and should therefore be held directly accountable? Views about the respective merits of single and plural accountability also have a bearing on issues of basic constitutional and institutional design. Should institutions be structured with strong centralised control in order to facilitate single-line accountability? Or should a more fragmented structure be encouraged with the purpose of facilitating a more pluralist form of accountability? The issue goes to the heart of debates over parliamentary versus presidential government and over unitary versus federal systems. Do the separation of powers and constitutional checks and balances, as built into the United States constitution, help or hinder government accountability? Does the sharing of functions between different levels of government make governments more or less accountable? Similar questions also arise over trends to devolve and dispersal of government power away from monolithic departments to semi-independent bodies linked to government by contracts and partnerships (Chapter 5). Does the replacement of hierarchies with networks improve or damage accountability?