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Accountability
Kinds of Accountability Terms modified by Accountability Selected AbstractsIMPLEMENTING BEST PRACTICE REGULATION IN A DYNAMIC MARKETPLACE: CONSULTATION AND ACCOUNTABILITYECONOMIC PAPERS: A JOURNAL OF APPLIED ECONOMICS AND POLICY, Issue S1 2008RIC SIMES The practice of financial regulation in Australia has drifted away from the lighted-handed principles articulated in the Wallis Report. The burden of regulatory compliance has steadily grown. The inconsistency between regulatory principle and practice is explained as the result of perverse incentives facing regulators, an absence of effective consultation with industry regarding the cost burden of regulation, and a failure to properly assess the social benefits and costs of regulatory intervention. The paper argues for the creation of a Bureau of Financial Sector Regulation to improve the accountability of regulators and publish independent social cost,benefit analyses of financial regulation. The paper also calls for a further inquiry into Australia's financial system ten years on from the Wallis Inquiry. [source] STREET-LEVEL BUREAUCRACY AND PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITYPUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, Issue 2 2007PETER HUPE The concept of ,street-level bureaucracy' was coined by Michael Lipsky (1980) as the common denominator for what would become a scholarly theme. Since then his stress on the relative autonomy of professionals has been complemented by the insight that they are working in a micro-network of relations, in varying contexts. The conception of ,governance' adds a particular aspect to this: the multi-dimensional character of a policy system as a nested sequence of decisions. Combining these views casts a different perspective on the ways street-level bureaucrats are held accountable. In this article some axiomatic assumptions are drawn from the existing literature on the theme of street-level bureaucracy and on the conception of governance. Acknowledging variety, and arguing for contextualized research, this results in a rethinking of the issue of accountability at the street level. [source] Auditing Conservation in an Age of AccountabilityCONSERVATION, Issue 3 2003"What are your results?", Instead of seeing conservation as just a good cause, people are starting to ask First page of article [source] Informed Consent and Clinician Accountability by STEVE CLARKE AND JUSTIN OAKLEYDERMATOLOGIC SURGERY, Issue 7 2009WILLIAM P. COLEMAN III MD No abstract is available for this article. [source] Accountability and Inaction: NGOs and Resource Lodging in DevelopmentDEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 2 2010Matthew Harsh ABSTRACT From the late 1980s, research on NGOs had a normative focus and was vulnerable to changing donor preoccupations. This article contributes a new conceptual approach, analysing the practices through which relationships and resources are translated into programmes and projects. The theoretical justification for this move combines the new ethnography of development practice with a re-agency approach to transactions across time and space. The study is based on data including thirty hours of video ethnography involving interviews and field visits with Kenyan NGOs in a variety of sectors. The analysis focuses on the problem of accountability that emerged through the interactions of donors and state corruption. We argue that NGOs operating in capital cities often provide organizational solutions to this problem. Depending on donor preferences, varying amounts of resources become ,lodged' or absorbed in ,capital NGOs' as they provide accounts of programmes that satisfy donors. However, no matter the donor preferences, capital NGOs provide accountability independently of increased action with communities or increased resources transferred to them. We conclude that the institutionalization of the NGO field as a well-grounded specialization depends in part on the degree to which researchers can sideline the stories generated in inter-organizational contexts such as workshops and policy meetings, and substitute understandings based on accounting practices, resource flows and social ties. [source] Beyond Accountability and Average Mathematics Scores: Relating State Education Policy Attributes to Cognitive Achievement DomainsEDUCATIONAL MEASUREMENT: ISSUES AND PRACTICE, Issue 4 2005Laura M. Desimone We found moderate correlations among four policy attributes (consistency, specificity, authority, and power), which suggest that in many states, at least in design, standards-based reform is working as advocates imagined,aligned content standards and assessments established, backed up by detailed guidelines and frameworks, incentivized by rewards and sanctions, and supported with extra resources and programs for struggling students and their teachers. Our findings suggest that specificity and authority may be related to improvements in procedural knowledge, and no change in problem solving or conceptual understanding, while power (accountability) may be associated with a small decrease in all types of learning. We found that disadvantaged students showed gains in procedural knowledge and did not lose ground in either conceptual understanding or problem solving. Implications for developing an improved theory of policy effects on achievement are discussed. [source] Social Studies Education in the Age of Testing and AccountabilityEDUCATIONAL MEASUREMENT: ISSUES AND PRACTICE, Issue 3 2005Susie Burroughs With 3 years and counting since its inception, the scope and impact of No Child Left Behind is now being felt in classrooms across the nation. Although some successes have been identified, concerns about the implementation and expectations of the legislation are emerging. As a result of the legislation's emphasis on the development of standards and assessment systems in reading, mathematics, and science, educators of other core and elective subjects are weighing the impact of being left out of the No Child Left Behind formula of testing and accountability. In an attempt to ascertain the perceptions and sentiments of social studies teachers concerning the impact of No Child Left Behind and the concomitant issue of state-level testing and accountability policy, a tristate study was conducted. The findings of this research indicate that although elementary, middle, and high school social studies educators recognize the negative consequences of being left out of No Child Left Behind, they are not convinced that being included would be better for them, their students, or social studies education in general. [source] District Accountability Without a State Assessment: A Proposed ModelEDUCATIONAL MEASUREMENT: ISSUES AND PRACTICE, Issue 4 2002Chad W. Buckendahl Most states have adopted assessment and accountability systems that involve common measures of student performance. A state assessment system that allows school districts to choose the specific strategies they use to measure student performance on state-adopted content standards presents a unique state accountability challenge. The authors propose an accountability model that addresses this challenge using a combination of student performance, technical quality, and noncognitive indicators of performance. They also describe a study that evaluated the proposed model using data from all school districts in a southern state. [source] The Nature of the Gift: Accountability and the Professor-Student RelationshipEDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND THEORY, Issue 6 2007Ana M. Martínez-Alemán Abstract In this paper I introduce the theory of gift giving as a possible means to reconcile the contradictions inherent in accountability measures of ,faculty productivity' in the American university. In this paper I sketch the theory of gift economies to show how, given the historical ideals that characterize the faculty-student relationship, a theory of gift giving could help us better judge the labor of the faculty. I suggest that it is the relational character of teaching that frustrates accountability measures and that perhaps if viewed as a gift economy,and in particular an economy with ,reproductive' ends,we could better grasp the effectiveness of these relationships. [source] Accountability should be the standard for managers as well as employeesEMPLOYMENT RELATIONS TODAY, Issue 2 2007Bruce Tulgan First page of article [source] Accountability, Control and Independence: The Case of European AgenciesEUROPEAN LAW JOURNAL, Issue 5 2009Madalina Busuioc This article points at two problematic assumptions made in some of the contemporary European agency literature. It proposes a conceptual framework, integrating accountability, autonomy and control, and aims to demonstrate how this type of conceptualisation contributes to clarifying problematic aspects of the current European agency debate. Empirical evidence from interviews with high-level practitioners is provided to illustrate the relevance of the proposed framework. The empirical information reveals that, at times, the de facto level of autonomy displayed by some European agencies is below the autonomy provided by the formal legal rules as a result of ongoing controls exercised by one (or other) of the principals. The repercussions that flow from these empirical insights for the agency debate in general, as well as for our understanding of agency accountability, will be discussed at length. [source] Analysing and Assessing Accountability: A Conceptual Framework1EUROPEAN LAW JOURNAL, Issue 4 2007Mark Bovens But how can we establish the existence of accountability deficits? This article tries to get to grips with the appealing but elusive concept of accountability by asking three types of questions. First a conceptual one: what exactly is meant by accountability? In this article the concept of accountability is used in a rather narrow sense: a relationship between an actor and a forum, in which the actor has an obligation to explain and to justify his or her conduct, the forum can pose questions and pass judgement, and the actor may face consequences. The second question is analytical: what types of accountability are involved? A series of dimensions of accountability are discerned that can be used to describe the various accountability relations and arrangements that can be found in the different domains of European governance. The third question is evaluative: how should we assess these accountability arrangements? The article provides three evaluative perspectives: a democratic, a constitutional and a learning perspective. Each of these perspectives may produce different types of accountability deficits. [source] Problems of Democratic Accountability in Network and Multilevel GovernanceEUROPEAN LAW JOURNAL, Issue 4 2007Yannis Papadopoulos Such processes are usually analysed under the angle of their efficiency, while their impact on the quality of democracy is neglected. This article first defines the concepts of multilevel governance and accountability, and then identifies the various dimensions of the latter. It further argues that MLG generates novel forms of accountability, but undermines its democratic dimension mainly for the following reasons: the weak visibility of MLG networks, their selective composition and the prevalence of peer over public forms of accountability. [source] Democratic Accountability and National Parliaments: Redefining the Impact of Parliamentary Scrutiny in EU AffairsEUROPEAN LAW JOURNAL, Issue 4 2007Katrin Auel Such an evaluation, however, is flawed: Formal mandating rights are usually incompatible with the overall logic of parliamentary systems, which explains why most national parliaments make very little use of them. Even more importantly, it unduly reduces parliamentary functions to the legislative or policy-making function. Drawing on agency theory, it will instead be argued that the functions of public deliberation and of holding the government publicly to account are at least as important and therefore need to be included in a redefined concept of parliamentary strength. In particular, the article proposes a distinction between two different elements of accountability,monitoring and political scrutiny,which recognises parliamentary majority and opposition as two distinct agents of the electorate. [source] The Schengen Law: A Challenge for Legal Accountability in the European UnionEUROPEAN LAW JOURNAL, Issue 2 2002Daniel Thym This article examines challenges for accountability arising from the development of the Schengen law within the framework of the European Union. Building upon the substantive body of research by other authors on general implications of the integration of the Schengen acquis, it focuses on recent developments after the entry into force of the Treaty of Amsterdam and evaluates to what extent the European institutions have so far met the challenges for accountability stemming from the intergovernmental origin of the Schengen law. The article identifies various persisting deficiencies in the areas of transparency, institutional balance and judicial review and proposes specific actions, which should be addressed vigorously by the European institutions. [source] The Fall and Renewal of the Commission: Accountability, Contract and Administrative OrganisationEUROPEAN LAW JOURNAL, Issue 2 2000Paul Craig The fall of the Santer Commission, prompted by the Report of the Committee of Independent Experts, sent shock waves throughout the entire Community. This article seeks to examine the nature of the problems which beset the Commission, to place these within the broader context of decision-making by public bodies, and to consider also the responsibilities of the Council and European Parliament for the delivery of agreed Community policies. The article analyses in detail the Reports of the Committee of Independent Experts, and the subsequent reforms initiated by the Prodi Commission, in order to assess the prospects for improved service delivery in the future. [source] More Peace for Less Money: Measurement and Accountability in the Swedish Armed ForcesFINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY & MANAGEMENT, Issue 4 2005Bino Catasús Studies of measurement and accountability are leading public sector transformation. By examining military work, this paper addresses the relationship between measurements and accountability by highlighting the measurements. Evidence was gathered from documents, political statements and field research. Several layers of accountability systems were found in the organisation. The principal can be the weak link in an accountability relationship if the measurement agenda is in the hands of the agent. The problems seem to go beyond performance and output, and a more fundamental question is challenging the public sector: `Are we doing the right things?' Or an even more dramatic existential question arises: `Why do we exist?' [source] Accounting and NPM in UK Local Government , Contributions Towards Governance and AccountabilityFINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY & MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2005Andrew Goddard Despite its size and economic importance, accounting in UK local government is still relatively under-researched. Two important developments which have emerged in recent years across the whole public sector are governance and New Public Management. It is timely to study the contribution which local government accounting makes in this changing context. Governance has proved a particularly contentious concept to define. This study has attempted to understand governance from the participants' perspective and consequently a grounded theory methodology has been used. The empirical research comprised four UK local authority case studies over a twelve month period. The grounded theory developed makes two important contributions to our knowledge of accounting and NPM in relation to governance and accountability in local government. These are the relative importance of accountability rather than governance per se to participants, and the more significant contribution to accountability made by budgeting practices rather than NPM practices such as performance indicators, contracting out of services and Best Value studies. The reasons for these findings are explored and theorised in the paper, using Bourdieu's concept of habitus. [source] Fragments of Economic Accountability and Trade PolicyFOREIGN POLICY ANALYSIS, Issue 2 2007RYAN KENNEDY While there has been a prodigious amount of literature on trade policy written in the past two decades, very little of that literature has dealt with countries in economic transition or nondemocratic regimes. There has also been a lack of work dealing with state interests in trade policy beyond realpolitik discussions of national security. This article seeks to fill some of these gaps through a study of two samples: one of liberalization in 25 post-Communist countries between the years 1991 and 1999 and the other of 124 countries from around the world in 1997. The study concludes that a key element in the choice between free trade and protectionism is the level of "fragmentation of economic accountability." Such fragmentation consists of two major components: (1) the existence of a strong capitalist class that is independent of the government; and (2) the dispersion of political power among actors both inside and outside the government. Where the government is more accountable to a wide range of interests, policies are more likely to be aligned with market mechanisms, encouraging the adoption of reforms, including the liberalization of trade policy. This article builds on the conclusions of Frye and Mansfield in several ways: (1) it embeds political fragmentation into a larger theoretical framework of economic accountability of government institutions; (2) it introduces the importance of state ownership in shaping government interests; (3) it introduces an idea of social, not just institutional, accountability; and (4) it proposes a statist view of trade policy that is lacking in the present literature. [source] Participatory Budgeting in Brazil: Contestation, Cooperation, and Accountability , By Brian WamplerGOVERNANCE, Issue 1 2009BERND REITERArticle first published online: 22 DEC 200 First page of article [source] Disaggregated Sovereignty: Towards the Public Accountability of Global Government NetworksGOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION, Issue 2 2004Anne-Marie Slaughter Networks of government officials , police investigators, financial regulators, even judges and legislators , are a key feature of world order in the twenty-first century. Yet, these networks present significant accountability and legitimacy concerns. This article identifies and responds to the potential problems of government networks by suggesting means to increase their accountability and proposing norms to govern the relations of members of government networks with one another. Finally, the article develops the concept of disaggregated sovereignty, arguing that government networks have the capacity to enter into international regulatory regimes of various types and thereby are independently bound by the existing corpus of international law. [source] Defining Accountability Up: the Global Economic MultilateralsGOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION, Issue 2 2004Miles Kahler Critics of the global economic multilaterals (GEMs) , the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization , allege that these organizations fail the test of democratic accountability. Two distinct measures of democratic accountability have been applied to the GEMs. To the degree that these organizations display ,accountability deficits', those deficiencies are the result of choices by the most influential national governments. Three techniques have been deployed to enhance the accountability of the GEMs: transparency (more information for those outside the institution), competition (imitation of democratic accountability) and changes in rules of representation (accountability to stakeholders rather than shareholders). Each of these may impose costs, however, and may conflict with other valued aims of the organizations. [source] New Directions in Theorising Social Accountability?IDS BULLETIN, Issue 6 2007Niraja Gopal Jayal First page of article [source] Institutionalising Women's Interests and Accountability to Women in Development (Introduction)IDS BULLETIN, Issue 4 2006Anne Marie Goetz First page of article [source] Central Bank Accountability and Transparency: Theory and Some EvidenceINTERNATIONAL FINANCE, Issue 1 2002Sylvester C. W. Eijffinger The first part of this paper outlines the concept of democratic accountability of central banks, and compares the legal accountability of the European Central Bank (ECB) with some other central banks (Bank of Canada, Bank of Japan, Bank of England and the Federal Reserve System). The second part presents a theory of central bank accountability. Two aspects of accountability are considered: transparency of actual monetary policy and the question of who bears final responsibility for monetary policy. The paper shows that accountability through transparency leads to a lower expected rate of inflation and less stabilization of supply shocks. Accountability through shifting final responsibility in the direction of the government leads to higher inflationary expectations and more stabilization of supply shocks. [source] An Examination of the Effects of Accountability when Auditors are Uncertain about the Views of Superior PartnersINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AUDITING, Issue 2 2001Steven E. Kaplan This experiment focused on the effect of accountability on senior audit managers' reporting decisions related to ambiguous scenarios, where the auditors could only speculate on the views of superior auditors on specific reporting issues. It examines the potential effect of accountability on the relationship between judgments an auditor would make versus the judgments the auditor perceives superior partners would make. In particular, accountable auditors were predicted to engage in a hybrid strategy of processing information with more effort and of complying more with views they perceived to be held by the superiors. Consistent with the acceptability heuristic, the results indicate that accountability is associated with greater agreement between self-judgments and judgments the auditor perceives superiors would make. However, contrary to Tetlock's (1992) theory but consistent with some prior research (Johnson and Kaplan, 1991; Hoffman and Patton, 1997), the accountability treatment did not significantly affect the auditors' processing of information. [source] Accountability, Participation and Foreign Aid EffectivenessINTERNATIONAL STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 2 2010Matthew S. Winters Foreign aid involves a chain of accountability relationships stretching from international donors through national governments and implementing agencies to a set of ultimate end users of the goods and services financed by the aid. In this paper, I review five different accountability relationships that exist in foreign aid projects among donors, governments, implementing agencies and end users. Then I summarize existing empirical evidence demonstrating that foreign aid functions better,both at the macro-level of aid flows and at the micro-level of individual aid projects,when there is more government and implementing agency accountability. Specifying several mechanisms that facilitate accountability, I emphasize that participation is a tool often used to produce accountability within aid projects. However, in terms of donor accountability to aid-receiving countries and the end users in them, recent pushes for increased participation have not resulted in more accountability in the design of aid programs. Ultimately, although enthusiasm for participatory models of aid design and delivery is warranted, participation is not a panacea for all the accountability problems in foreign aid programs. [source] Toward More Effective Stakeholder Dialogue: Applying Theories of Negotiation to Policy and Program Evaluation,JOURNAL OF APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 12 2006Bernadette Campbell Borrowing from the negotiation literature, we tested 2 factors that might improve stakeholder dialogue in program and policy evaluation. Undergraduate stakeholders (61 pairs) engaged in dialogue about their universities' alcohol policies. Pairs were randomly assigned to levels of accountability audience and dialogue structure. The audience for the videotaped dialogue was described as holding either (a) views about the policy similar to the participant's, consistent across audience members (homogeneous), or (b) mixed views, on both sides of the issue (heterogeneous). Pairs approached the dialogue with either (a) problem-solving goals or (b) no particular strategy. Dyads accountable to a heterogeneous audience and given problem-solving instructions exhibited the most effective dialogue. Accountability to a heterogeneous audience facilitated satisfaction with and optimism about dialogue. Accountability to homogeneous audiences and adopting no particular strategy yielded the least positive perceptions of dialogue. Implications for stakeholder dialogue, and for the role of social psychology in evaluation are discussed. [source] Effects of Accountability on Rating Behavior and Rater AccuracyJOURNAL OF APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 12 2003Neal P. Mero We tested whether improvements in rater accuracy on a performance-appraisal task attributed to rater accountability could be explained by variance in rater behavior. Data from Mero and Motowidlo (1995) were used initially to test whether observed improvements in rater accuracy could be explained by rating process behaviors of attending to relevant subordinate performance and taking better notes to record that performance. Results showed that both behaviors were correlated with accuracy and that these behaviors partially mediated the relationship between accountability and improved decision quality for participants who were held accountable for their rating decision and did not have any preconceived information about that rating from their supervisor. We then tested this process model on a new sample of participants and found that attentiveness and notetaking mediated the relationship between accountability and accuracy. [source] Global Problem: National Accountability: Framing Accountability in the Australian Context of Climate ChangeJOURNAL OF CONTINGENCIES AND CRISIS MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2008Eva-Karin Olsson Climate change has been seen as a crisis looming in the future, and has therefore not reached the top of the political agenda. This no longer holds true when looking at Australia, where climate change has become high politics. In this paper we examine the Australian electoral debate in terms of accountability framing, where the Government and Opposition were involved in a ,framing contest'. We argue that theories on accountability framing in crisis need to be modified in order to capture the complex dynamics of climate change due to its inherent scientific uncertainty and global nature. After conducting an inductive analysis of Australian Broadcasting Corporation-reporting we found three themes to be of importance for accountability framing in the ,risk society': labeling, linking and coping. [source] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||