SUMMER 2020

POL 101: Session 16 (NHA)

ACCOUNTABILITY AND ITS

FORMS
 WHAT IS
ACCOUNTABILITY?
Accountability is a noun that describes accepting responsibility, and it can
be personal or public.

In ethics and governance accountability is answerability, liability and the

expectation of account-giving.

Accountability is one of the most important components of democracy.

A government has accountability for decisions and laws

affecting its citizens.

An individual has accountability for acts and behaviors.

If someone takes responsibility for his/her own actions, he/she shows
accountability.
 ACCOUNTABILITY IN ORGANIZATIONS

Accountability is an obligation or willingness to accept

responsibility or to account for one’s actions.
It seems in the public sector, accidents aren’t caused, they
happen all by themselves. Massive project failures, poor
productivity, terrible customer service, significant financial
losses, security and privacy breaches, these all just magically
occur as if someone is playing his tricks on the organization. No
one takes ownership or responsibility.

But someone has to take responsibility.

 ACCOUNTABILITY IN GOVERNMENT AND CORPORATIONS

A regime or system of government in which rulers are held

accountable for their actions in the public domain by
citizens acting indirectly through the competition and
cooperation of their representatives.

Corporate accountability involves being answerable to all

an organization's stakeholders for all actions and results.

Accountability is an assurance that an individual or an

organization will be evaluated on their performance or
behavior related to something for which they are
responsible.
 WHY ACCOUNTABILITY IS IMPORTANT?
■ The public, the political leadership of government and
its public services are closely tied to each other by
institutional arrangements and political interaction.
Whatever it is called, public administration or public
management the business of government is embedded
in politics. There is a fundamental requirement in a
democratic system for accountability from the
administration to the political leadership.

■ Accountability is one of the inevitable factors which are

indispensable for ensuring good governance. It is the
best way to build the government's capacity.
 TRADITIONAL MODEL OF ACCOUNTABILITY

There are two main forms of accountability:

■Political accountability

■Bureaucratic or Managerial accountability.

 POLITICAL ACCOUNTABILITY
Political accountability is the accountability of the government, civil servants and
politicians to the public and to legislative bodies. That means politicians are finally
able to be called to account by the ordinary citizenry, mainly through the act of voting.
Generally, voters do not have any direct way of holding elected representatives to
account during the term for which they have been elected. Additionally, some officials
and legislators may be appointed rather than elected.
Constitution can empower a legislative body to hold their own members, the
government, and government bodies to account. This can be through holding an
internal or independent inquiry. Inquiries are usually held in response to an allegation
of misconduct or corruption.

The powers, procedures and sanctions vary from country to country. The legislature
may have the power to impeach the individual, remove them, or suspend them from
office for a period of time.
 POLITICAL ACCOUNTABILITY
When a politician makes choices on behalf of the people and the people have the
ability to reward or sanction the politician then he is accountable. In representative
democracies citizens delegate power to elected officials through periodic elections in
order to represent or act in their interest. Citizens can rely on rewards or sanctions to
threaten or reward politicians who might otherwise act hostile to the people's interest.

Governments are accountable if voters can discern whether governments are acting in
their interest and sanction them appropriately, so that those incumbents who act in the
best interest of the citizens win reelection and those who do not lose them.

Representatives can be held accountable through two mechanisms: electoral

replacement and rational anticipation. 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 the
vote to sanction or reward politicians.
Voters can hold representatives accountable through
the process of sanctioning, voters voting the
incumbent out of office in response to poor
performance.

While politicians face a decrease in vote share as a

result of poor performance, they are less likely to see
an increase in vote share for good performance.
 IN A PARLIAMENTARY
SYSTEM
In the Westminster system, such as the United Kingdom, the
public service is accountable through its hierarchy to the
minister who is accountable to the Cabinet, then to Parliament
and ultimately to the people. Every act of every public servant
is therefore an act of the minister and the people who
originally chose the minister through choosing the party that
wins government.

A minister is in charge of a department and the hierarchical

structure ensures normal bureaucratic accountability through
the various levels.
 IN A PRESIDENTIAL SYSTEM
In a presidential system, notably the United States, there are several key
differences from a parliamentary system affecting political accountability.

First, the fact of a written constitution means that interpretation of the

constitution, and laws made according to it, increases the importance of the
judicial branch of government.

Secondly, the effective fusion of the executive and the legislative branch, as
in the Westminster system, is specifically ruled out in the United States, so
that the Congress and the President are not formally linked. In the formal
sense, the two branches of government are separate, although, in practice,
there are quite strong informal links.

Thirdly, the federal system affects the system of political accountability.

Under the Constitution, powers are divided between the federal government
and state governments, and voters are assumed to be able to exercise their
powers of political accountability correctly.
 BUREAUCRATIC OR MANAGERIAL ACCOUNTABILITY

Traditional public administration had its own form of bureaucratic accountability. In

this, the bureaucracy merely advised the political leadership on policy, and
managed its resources as well as possible on behalf of the political leadership.

Every public servant is technically accountable, through the hierarchical structure of

the department, to the political leadership and eventually to the people. In addition,
there is supposed to be a strict separation between matters of policy, formally the
province of politicians, and matters of administration, which is left to the public
service.

The model of separation between politics and administration is easy to understand

and superficially attractive. Any act of the administration is attributable to the
political leadership and the public servant is merely an instrument carrying out the
policy instructions arising from the political leadership.
 WHAT IS PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY?

Public accountability means the

obligation to answer publicly to report, to
an acceptable standard of answering, for
the discharge of responsibilities that
affect the public in important ways. It is
the obligation to answer for a
responsibility assigned.
 PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY Contd

Public accountability is the symbol of modern democratic

governance. Democracy remains a paper procedure if those in
power cannot be held accountable in public for their acts and
omissions, for their decisions, their policies, and their
expenditures.

Public accountability, as an institution, therefore, is the

complement of public management. Historically, the concept of
accountability is closely related to accounting. In fact, it literally
comes from bookkeeping. Nowadays, accountability has moved
far beyond its bookkeeping origins and has become a symbol
for good governance, both in the public and in the private
sector.
 WHY IS PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY IMPORTANT?

Public accountability is important

because it provides a democratic
means to monitor and control
government conduct, prevent the
development of concentrations of
power, and enhance the learning
capacity and effectiveness
of public administration.
 DIFFERENT TYPES OF ACCOUNTABILITY

•Ethical Accountability
•Administrative Accountability
•Market Accountability
•Constituency Relations
•Public/Private Overlap
 ETHICAL ACCOUNTABILITY
Ethical accountability is the practice of improving overall personal and
organizational performance by developing and promoting responsible tools
and professional expertise, and by advocating an effective enabling
environment for people and organizations to embrace a culture of
sustainable development.

Ethical accountability may include the individual, as well as small and large
businesses, not-for-profit organizations, research institutions and
academics, and government.

It is unethical to plan an action for social change without excavating the

knowledge and wisdom of the people who are responsible for implementing
the plans of action and the people whose lives will be affected.
 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, behaviour is bounded by rules and regulations,
secondly, civil servants are subordinates in a hierarchy and
accountable to superiors.
Nonetheless, there are independent “watchdog” units to
scrutinize and hold departments accountable, legitimacy of
these commissions is built upon their independence, as it
avoids any conflicts of interest. Apart from internal checks,
some “watchdog” units accept complaints from citizens, bridging
government and society to hold civil servants accountable to
citizens, but not merely governmental departments.
 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.

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.
 CONSTITUENCY RELATIONS

A particular agency or the government is accountable if

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.
 PUBLIC/PRIVATE OVERLAP
With the increase over the last several decades in public
service provision by private entities, especially in Britain
and the United States, some have called for increased
political accountability mechanisms to be applied to
otherwise non-political entities.

The line between public institutions and private entities

like corporations is becoming blurred in certain areas of
public service provision in the UK and that this can
compromise political accountability in those areas.
 ACCOUNTABILITY VS RESPONSIBILITY

What is the difference between accountability

and responsibility?
The main difference between
responsibility and accountability is
that responsibility can be shared
while accountability cannot.
Being accountable not only means
being responsible for something but also
ultimately being answerable for actions.
 SCENARIO OF BANGLADESH
Although Bangladesh is not a fully functioning democratic country and it never
was, in the last two decades it has developed a number of democratic
institutions. These information institutions have been developed to address the
mechanism of political accountability.

Bangladesh enacted the Right to Information Act in 2009 and established a

few key public information institutions including the Information Commission
(IC) and Access to Information Programme hoping that the freedom of
information would not only challenge the culture of secrecy and veil but also
encourage the elected leaders to be answerable to the citizens.

Institutions like the Right to Information, Information Commission,

Anti-Corruption Commission, Human Rights Commission, ICT-based
governance system, media are those that have actively paved the way and
created the opportunities to practice democratic governance in recent years.
 SCENARIO OF BANGLADESH
The role of the information institutions in bringing the political
accountability in the current fragile democracy in Bangladesh
is not very promising.
Considering the poor democratic practices in the recent years,
accountability of the political leaders has increased to a certain
considerable extent partly because of the increased
transparency and proactive disclosure in the formal and
informal institutional mechanisms, and mostly because of the
leading active role of the mass media organisations.
Despite having this increased transparency and freedom of
information, accountability is not sustainable without an
effective democratic institutional mechanism.
 REFERENCES
Public Accountability
Mark Bovens
The Oxford Handbook of Public Management
Edited by Ewan Ferlie, Laurence E. Lynn Jr., and Christopher Pollitt
https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199226443.001.0001/o
xfordhb-9780199226443-e-9

Identify the different types of Accountability.

https://www.owlgen.in/identify-the-different-types-of-accountability/

ACCOUNTABILITY IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR

by Jeffrey Morganby Jeffrey Morgan | Oct 8, 2016 | About the Public Sector
https://www.careersingovernment.com/tools/gov-talk/about-gov/accountability-public-se
ctor/

Information Institutions and the Political Accountability in Bangladesh Information

Institutions and the Political Accountability in Bangladesh, Mahmudul Hoque,
https://www.academia.edu/34065383/Information_Institutions_and_the_Political_Accou
ntability_in_Bangladesh_Information_Institutions_and_the_Political_Accountability_in_B
angladesh