Less Government, More Secrecy: Reinvention and the Weakening of Freedom of Information Law

Many critics have suggested that worldwide efforts to reinvent government could also weaken democratic control over public institutions, but few have considered how attempts to implement the "new paradigm" in public management might affect a widely used instrument for promoting accountability: freedom of information law (FOI). FOI laws give citizens and nongovernmental organizations the right of access to government information. However, recent Canadian experience shows that reinvention can weaken FOI laws in three ways. First, attempts to reduce "nonessential" spending may cause delays in handling FOI requests and weaken mechanisms for ensuring compliance. Second, governmental functions may be transferred to private contractors and not-for-profit organizations that are not required to comply with FOI laws. Third, governments' attempts to sell information and increase FOI fees may create new economic barriers to openness. Thus, restructuring provides an opportunity for political executives, public servants, and some well-organized business interests to weaken oversight mechanisms and increase their own autonomy within the policy process.     

Performance Standards and Evaluation

The benefits of performance monitoring for public services are identified as greater transparency of objectives and accountability for results. This article considers recent experience in developing standards to evaluate efficiency and effectiveness of public services. In broad terms this is being done through performance information which is a much more encompassing concept than standards or indicators. Such information is an element of an accountability framework that provides greater management autonomy and flexibility and extends to the private sector which is increasingly providing, or involved with the provision of, public services.     

Partnership in Economic Development: The Case of U.K. Local Enterprise Agencies

The rapid development of local enterprise agencies in Britain in the 1980s has been an important focus for the increasing involvement of the private sector in economic development. These agencies present themselves as locally oriented partnerships and the paper draws on evidence from a recent survey, undertaken by the author in Greater London, to show what partnership can mean in practice. A particular focus is the relation between enterprise agencies and local authorities. This leads to a discussion of some of the policy issues arising from the development of these agencies which is part of a wider growth of the non-elected state in Britain through the decade. It is argued that their development raises important questions concerning their lack of local democratic accountability.     

An economic explanation of the nationalization of electoral politics

The literature on the nationalization of electoral politics focuses on the institutional characteristics of political regimes and the structure and organization of social cleavages. We argue that the nationalization of electoral politics is also driven by economic performance. Economic perturbations increase vote transfers from large (and highly nationalized) parties to small (and weakly nationalized) parties. Permissive electoral systems exacerbate the influence of economic performance on nationalization. Pooled cross-sectional time-series regression analysis is conducted on data from 43 countries and 475 elections between 1950 and 2012. The party-level mechanisms are shown through a closer look at Austria, Portugal and Ireland.     

DEVELOPMENTS IN PUBLIC SECTOR AUDIT: HOW EFFECTIVE ARE EFFICIENCY AUDITS?

Abstract: A crucial issue facing the public sector is the extent to which efficiency and effectiveness are elements in the concept of accountability to parliament and the people. This paper argues that the recent moves towards efficiency audit in many countries, including Australia, need to be extended to effectiveness audit, and that to the extent that this does not occur, efficiency (and compliance) audit in the public sector is ineffective and accountability lacking.
An examination of Australian public sector auditing is undertaken first, based on a discussion of the 1974–76 Royal Commission on Australian Government Administration, the 1977–82 Review of New South Wales Government Administration and the subsequent implementation of their recommendations as the means of clarifying and elucidating the definitions of compliance, efficiency and effectiveness audit, as well as a means of critically analysing Australian developments. Developments in public sector auditing in the United Kingdom and the United States of America are critically examined. Finally, the future prospects and problems facing public sector audit in Australia are reviewed, and policy options relating to the development of comprehensive audit are outlined.     

UK Privatisation Revisited: Ideas and Policy Change, 1979–92

Privatisation in the UK was facilitated by the interplay of ideas, institutions, actors, and economic interests. The motivations of the programme were ideational and political, but the objectives were economic and administrative. Together these paved the way for the success of the policy. Although several rationales were at play in the unfolding of privatisation, the ideological predilection of the Thatcher governments underpinned this far-reaching policy reform. This explains why the Thatcher government did not reform nationalized industries within the public sector, but instead shifted them into the private sector. Privatisation succeeded because it was championed by new right policy entrepreneurs, was supported by interest groups prepared to support, or least not impede, such dramatic policy change, and when the public enterprise status quo was deemed in need of reform. Of course, ideas only act as a catalyst for policy change when an established policy agenda having withered, been worn-out or otherwise discredited, can then be successfully challenged.     

Models of Political Accountability and Concepts of Australian Government

Models of political accountability are drawn from views about the nature of government. Too often, however, these views are flawed and/or not made explicit. In particular, the traditional model of government accountability - which will be outlined below - misunderstands the British 'parent' system of responsible government. One immediate task for those interested in accountability is to map the basic features of the Australian system (best understood as 'executive federalism') in order to provide foundations for new accountability models. As well as delaying the map drawing task, the dominance of the traditional account has also 'crowded out' other concepts of accountability. The 'efficiency' and 'democracy' approaches will be discussed below as basically complementary addition to the current Australian debate over accountability. It is thus argued here that a more eclectic approach drawing from diverse but longstanding strands in the public administration tradition can not only enrich the debate but also help to throw light on new public policy developments such as contracting out.     

Entrepreneurship-driven public management reforms in Southeast Asia: Critical implications for public accountability

In recent decades, public management has been restructured worldwide for greater efficiency and innovation based on entrepreneurship-driven models such as Reinventing Governance, New Public Management, and post-NPM frameworks. The primary intent of these business-like models is instilling entrepreneurship, which would encourage risk-taking innovation, managerial autonomy, performance orientation, and customer choice. Such entrepreneurial orientation is embedded in organizational-managerial reforms related to human resource management, budgeting framework, performance benchmarking, and so on. These entrepreneurship-driven reforms have significant impacts on administrative structure, procedures, and norms affecting the process of public sector accountability. In line with such global trends, most countries in Southeast Asia have embraced some of these pro-market business-type reforms in public management to enhance its entrepreneurship, innovation, and competition, which have implications for managerial control, neutrality, regulation, and integrity required for public accountability. This article explores these entrepreneurship-driven reforms in the region and evaluates their critical implications for the long-established institutions, structures, and procedures of public accountability.     

From managerial reform to democratic reformation: Towards a deliverative public administration

In the State of Victoria, Australia the Kennett government implemented a radical public sector reforms matched perhaps only in Britain and New Zealand. Responding to fiscal crisis, the Government balanced the budget, attracted new investment and capital projects, and instilled new economic confidence. However, the revolution had its costs. This article examines the effects of managerial reform on accountability and democracy. The structures, systems and methodologies of the Government eliminated real deliberation over options, benefits and costs. The quality of public discourse between government and constitutents about the democratic process was stifled. An economic and fiscal perspective replaced a political and legal understanding of public bureaucracy. The article provides a case study of Victorian reforms, and a theoretical examination of the case, suggesting that public administration should be reconceptualized in more pluralistic and democratic terms.     

'Managing for Outcomes': Accountability and Thrust

Central agencies in New Zealand are now defining public management performance to include both the quality of a manager's 'account' of output-outcome links and the manager's record of delivering efficient outputs. This article: (1) argues that the hard edge of accountability for deliverables must be dulled somewhat in order to pursue outcomes more vigorously; (2) shows how managers can use evaluation tools known as theories-in-action or logic models to give accounts of policy and management thrust; (3) proposes preliminary performance criteria for outcomes-focused management; and (4) attempts to sketch a new 'managing for outcomes' accountability bargain. The conclusions apply broadly to any jurisdiction interested in holding managers accountable for outcomes-focused management.     

Mandatory due diligence laws and climate change litigation: Bridging the corporate climate accountability gap?

The debate on corporate climate accountability has become increasingly prominent in recent years. Several countries, particularly in the Global North, have adopted mandatory human rights and/or environmental due diligence legislation. At the same time, judicial and quasi-judicial proceedings are helping to shape the contours of corporate climate accountability. This article considers how litigation against corporations and due diligence legislation interact, and thereby help develop and strengthen corporate climate accountability. While the practice in this area is still limited, there is scope to reflect on early developments and how they may influence both future climate litigation as well as ongoing and future law-making on due diligence. We first review recent developments in climate litigation against corporations, focusing on the extent to which they rely on climate due diligence obligations. We then survey existing and proposed due diligence legislation, examining the extent to which it addresses corporate climate accountability. Finally, we identify scenarios of how due diligence legislation and climate litigation may interact and possibly converge to strengthen corporate climate accountability. We furthermore identify knowledge gaps and areas for further research.     

Accountability for Performance in Local Government

The nature of accountability for performance in the public sector is explored in this paper by attempting to answer three questions: (1) How important is accountability for performance? (2) Which of the stakeholders consider themselves accountable for organisational performance, including contracts? (3) Does information asymmetry between stakeholders in regard to performance information affect accountability? This paper reports on research undertaken in Victorian local government based on the responses to a questionnaire by councillors and tier one and two managers. The results of the survey indicate that there is an understanding of accountability for performance, that both managers and councillors are considered to be accountable for performance but that information asymmetry and accountability relationships are problematic.     

Do Managers Face a Performance Trade-Off? Correlations Between Production and Process Performance

The existence of multiple goals in public organizations inevitably raises the concern that managers face performance trade-offs. In particular, scholars have expressed the fear that public managers, in order to secure high production performance, are forced to sacrifice performance on goals like equity, accountability, and procedural justice. However, our knowledge of whether such trade-offs exist is scarce. Using an administrative 10-year panel data set of Danish public schools and principals, this article analyzes trade-offs between production performance (measured by student performance and student pass rate) and process performance (measured by equity, accountability, and procedural justice). Results show no evidence of trade-offs. In contrast, principals who succeed in raising student performance generally also succeed in securing high pass rates, high equity, high accountability, and high procedural justice. These results suggest that managers who are able to secure high performance on one dimension of performance will likely also be high-performing on other performance dimensions.     

The opposition deficit in EU accountability: Evidence from over 20 years of plenary debate in four member states

Debates about the European Union's democratic legitimacy put national parliaments into the spotlight. Do they enhance democratic accountability by offering visible debates and electoral choice about multilevel governance? To support such accountability, saliency of EU affairs in the plenary ought to be responsive to developments in EU governance, has to be linked to decision‐making moments and should feature a balance between government and opposition. The recent literature discusses various partisan incentives that support or undermine these criteria, but analyses integrating these arguments are rare. This article provides a novel comparative perspective by studying the patterns of public EU emphasis in more than 2.5 million plenary speeches from the German Bundestag, the British House of Commons, the Dutch Tweede Kamer and the Spanish Congreso de los Diputados over a prolonged period from 1991 to 2015. It documents that parliamentary actors are by and large responsive to EU authority and its exercise where especially intergovernmental moments of decision making spark plenary EU salience. But the salience of EU issues is mainly driven by government parties, decreases in election time and is negatively related to public Euroscepticism. The article concludes that national parliaments have only partially succeeded in enhancing EU accountability and suffer from an opposition deficit in particular.     

THE FINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY AND CONTROL STRUCTURE OF PUBLIC SECTOR UTILITIES*

Abstract: Profit-based financial measures have been given prominence in the present financial accountability and control systems of public sector utilities in Australia. As a result, periodic evaluation of financial accountability and managerial performance suffers from a lack of objective-orientation. Assessing the financial accountability and controlling the activities of public utilities properly requires information consistent with their operational environment. Neither clear financial policies and targets, nor a set of environment-specific performance measures have been outlined by the government. The paper proposes that, in addition to profit measures, consideration should also be given to non-profit measures if an improvement is really desired in the monitoring of managerial performance and in accountability of those utilities which operate in virtual monopoly or near-monopoly situations.     

Parallel lines? Policy mood in a plurinational democracy

We usually think of democratic accountability in national terms – if the people do not approve of a government, they can replace it. However, in a plurinational democracy it is not obvious that such a single national public exists. We consider this problem in the case of Scotland, providing the first application of the macro-polity approach to a plurinational democracy. We provide a systematic study of how public opinion in Scotland changes over time compared to that in the rest of Great Britain, using recently developed Bayesian IRT scaling techniques, and ask whether Scottish and British public opinion move in parallel. To the extent that there is a separate Scottish public opinion with a separate party system, this forces us to rethink the way that democracy and accountability work in plurinational political systems.     

Learning to Love Democracy: Electoral Accountability and the Success of Democracy

This article explains why dissatisfaction with the performance of individual politicians in new democracies often turns into disillusionment with democracy as a political system. The demands on elections as an instrument of political accountability are much greater in new than established democracies: politicians have yet to form reputations, a condition that facilitates the entry into politics of undesirable candidates who view this period as their “one‐time opportunity to get rich.” After a repeatedly disappointing government performance, voters may rationally conclude that “all politicians are crooks” and stop discriminating among them, to which all politicians rationally respond by “acting like crooks,” even if most may be willing to perform well in office if given appropriate incentives. Such an expectation‐driven failure of accountability, which I call the “trap of pessimistic expectations,” may precipitate the breakdown of democracy. Once politicians establish reputations for good performance, however, these act as barriers to the entry into politics of low‐quality politicians. The resulting improvement in government performance reinforces voters’ belief that democracy can deliver accountability, a process that I associate with democratic consolidation. These arguments provide theoretical microfoundations for several prominent empirical associations between the economic performance of new democracies, public attitudes toward democracy, and democratic stability.     

Are Public Service Nonprofit Boards Meeting Their Responsibilities?

Public service nonprofit organizations have long been "partners" in the delivery of public services. Such nonprofit organizations are governed by boards, typically composed of citizen volunteers, that are expected to meet substantial standards of accountability and performance. Previous research has raised questions about how well such boards are meeting their responsibilities. A 2007 Urban Institute study, based on the first large representative sample of U.S. public benefit nonprofits, provides important evidence about the extent to which nonprofit boards are meeting certain accountability and performance standards.     

Auditing as a tool of government accountability? Exploring divergent causal mechanisms through three Honduran cases

Audits of government entities offer a potential tool to hold public officials to account and to improve the functioning of public administration; however, empirical studies of audit impacts show mixed results. This is largely due to the diversity of audit regimes with different goals and accountability mechanisms, which yield different causal chains. In this study, I compare three distinct audit regimes with distinct casual mechanisms in Honduras. I find that backward-looking audits, which aim to hold officials accountable for past behavior or performance, require effective horizontal accountability mechanisms to investigate and prosecute cases. Forward-looking audits, which aim to hold officials accountable for future behavior or performance, require independent accountability mechanisms, a systematic follow-up methodology, public dissemination, and pressure from the media and civil society. Complementary initiatives that build on audit recommended reforms are found to strengthen these weaknesses in the causal mechanism linking audits to outcomes.     

英国公用事业的民营化改革及其经验教训

英国公用事业的民营化改革具有深刻的经济、政治原因,英国采取了多种民营化形式,并取得了一定的成效;英国民营化后建立了由政府管制立法、执法和社会监督组成的管制框架;英国民营化改革的经验教训是多方面的,其中包括:法律制度是公用事业民营化改革的准则,政企分离是公用事业民营化改革的关键,竞争是提高公用事业经济效率的根本途径,有效竞争是制定公用事业管制政策的目标导向,政府应按照经济原理制定公用事业的管制价格。