Control and Accountability in the Public Sector

Providing redress for maladministration is a key requirement of any legitimate system of public service delivery. The panel explores different ways of holding public authorities and agents of public service delivery accountable. Public sector control and accountable is a salient and recurrent issue in the analysis of public policy and its implementation and evaluation in particular. While some notions of accountability refer to formal and highly institutionalized forms of control (such as disciplinary powers or court proceedings), others highlight the informal nature of “accountability as a virtue” and rely on ethical standards and personal convictions as expressed in social control and peer group pressure, but also in acts of “whistle blowing”. On another spectrum of different elements of accountability and control, the variety ranges from instruments and mechanisms internal to the organization (such as oversight by supervisors, political executives and investigations by internal affair units), to arrangements that primarily lie outside of the organization (such as parliamentary scrutiny, ombudspersons, citizen review boards, audit systems, regulatory agencies and even “counter-bureaucracies”, but also investigative journalism, “citizen watch” initiatives and social media activism).
Arguably, institutional arrangements for holding public sector agents accountable will differ across policy sectors and national boundaries depending, for example, on prevailing notions of the state, political system characteristics (presidential vs. parliamentary systems of government), types of executive government, political competition and party systems, modes of interest representation, but also on different types of public services rendered.
Theoretical and conceptual expositions as well as empirical analyses are sought for this panel which also encourages a broad range of methodological approaches. Comparative perspectives across time, national borders or different areas of public policy are particularly encouraged.