Throwing the rascals out? Problems of accountability in two‐party systems

This article critically examines the concept of ‘accountability’ as it is understood in two‐party systems and majoritarian democracy – namely the ability of voters to remove governments that violate their mandates or otherwise perform poorly. Voters’ capacity to ‘throw the rascals out’ is one of the main normative appeals of two‐partism and the single‐member plurality (SMP) electoral system. However, this article uses a spatial model to show that in at least two types of situation voters are left in a bind when confronted with a mandate‐breaking governing party: (1) when both major parties undertake unexpected non‐centrist shifts in opposing directions after an election, leaving centrist voters with an unappealing choice; and (2) when a governing party that had won an election on a non‐centrist platform undertakes a post‐election shift to the centre, leaving its more radical supporters dissatisfied. In each case, voters have four imperfect options: punish the governing party by throwing the rascals out, but in doing so vote for a party that is ideologically more distant; abstain, and withdraw from the democratic process; vote for a minor party that has no hope of influencing government formation, but which might detach enough votes to allow the ideologically more distant major opposition party to win; and forgive the governing party its mandate‐breaking. All of these options represent accountability failures. The problems are illustrated with two case studies from two‐party systems: the United Kingdom in the mid‐1980s and New Zealand in the period 1984–1993. In both instances, many voters found it difficult to ‘throw the rascals out’ without harming their own interests in the process. The article concludes that accountability may sometimes be better achieved if voters can force a party to share power in coalition with another party in order to ‘keep it honest’ instead of removing it from government completely, as can happen in multi‐party systems based on proportional representation. Thus, although two‐partism based on plurality voting is normally regarded as superior to multi‐partism and proportional representation on the criterion of accountability, in some instances, the reverse can be true. The article therefore undermines a core normative argument advanced by supporters of majoritarian democracy and SMP.     

Does Decentralization Improve Perceptions of Accountability? Attitudinal Evidence from Colombia

Decentralization is argued to create incentives for local and regional politicians to be more responsive and accountable to their constituents, but few studies have directly tested this claim. We use survey data from Colombia to examine individual‐level evaluations of the degree to which decentralization prompts citizens to view department government as more accountable. We estimate the effect of administrative, fiscal, and political decentralization, controlling for participation, political knowledge, confidence in government, education, and income on perceptions of accountability. Our results indicate that administrative and fiscal decentralization improve perceptions of accountability, while political decentralization does not.     

Decentralization in Kerala: Panchayat government discretion and accountability

Kerala is regarded as one of the most decentralized states in India. Through a ‘big bang’ approach, Kerala implemented a significant fiscal decentralization program and then built the capacity of its local governments. We employ a diagnostic framework to analyze its local government discretion and accountability in political, administrative and fiscal domains. We find that Kerala's local governments have a very high degree of discretionary power accompanied by a high degree of accountability towards citizens. But the areas of administrative accountability and financial management need to be strengthened. Also there may have been excessive focus and investment on social accountability mechanisms at the cost of local government discretion and formal public sector accountability mechanisms. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Decentralization in Tanzania: An assessment of local government discretion and accountability

A large part of the decentralization literature is fragmented along political, fiscal, or administrative lines. In this article we employ a diagnostic framework to draw these dimensions together in a coherent manner to focus on analyzing local government discretion and accountability in Tanzania. Tanzania seems to have a deconcentrated local government system with central appointees having large powers at the local level. Centrally‐funded mandates—such as constructing secondary schools—dominate local government plans and budgets. Central control over administrative functions has ensured that administrative decentralization is yet to occur. In the fiscal sphere, progress has been made in transparency and harmonization of transfers in the last 5 years but local governments still have some way to go in raising own revenues, being less reliant on transfers, and ensuring downward accountability. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Developing Options for the Administration of Local Taxes: An International Review*

Do decentralization arguments extend to administration of subnational taxes? While centralized administration promises quality service at reasonable cost, it may dull accountability and slow the revenue flow. Also, central administration may devote less attention to collecting these taxes than for its own. Self‐administration brings administration closer to taxpayers and assures representation of jurisdictional interests in revenue apportionment disputes. However, subnational governments may lack technical capacity. That is the dilemma: while the central administration may be indifferent to rigorous collection of subnational taxes, subnational governments may lack capacity for self‐administration. In practice, nations use many different alternatives for administering subnational taxes.     

Autonomy and Performance: Decentralization Reforms in Zhejiang Province,China

Decentralization reforms rarely live up to the high hopes and expectations of the reformers for a variety of reasons rooted in actions and omissions of the governments pursuing it or in the context in which it is undertaken. The paper examines the experience of Zhejiang Province where decentralization was successful in achieving and indeed exceeding initial expectations. The remarkable feature of its reforms was ‘performance‐based’ decentralization wherein localities showing superior performance were awarded additional autonomy at a faster speed while the rest were given additional support to build their capacity for assuming more responsibility in the future. To understand the effects of this unique pattern of decentralization, the paper compares the performance of participating and non‐participating counties under five waves of reforms between 1992 and 2008, based on indicators such as gross domestic product, industrial output and local government revenue. It finds that performance‐based decentralization not only helped overcome the problem of capacity deficits but also fostered capacity in weaker counties to assume more autonomy in the future. The paper confirms that speed and sequence of transfer of autonomy and responsibilities to local governments are as important as the content of decentralization. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Local government decision‐making—citizen participation and local accountability: some evidence from Kenya and Uganda

The current fashion for decentralisation is built on the assumption that it will result in decisions that reflect local needs and priorities. Yet representative democracy, through periodic elections, is a crude mechanism for establishing these needs and priorities. Most local government systems offer few other opportunities for citizens to participate, particularly for the poor, and few mechanisms of accountability. This article reviews the literature relating local level decision‐making, citizen participation and accountability. It then presents the findings of a study of decision‐making about the use of resources in a sample of municipal governments in Kenya and Uganda. Local governments in Kenya have traditionally offered minimal scope for citizen participation or accountability, but this is beginning to change, mainly as a result of performance conditions applied through the recently introduced Local Authorities Transfer Fund (LATF), together with an increasingly active civil society. In Uganda, which has undergone a radical decentralisation, there is much greater scope for citizen participation at the local level but there are still many of the same problems of local accountability as in Kenya. The article reviews some of the examples of, and reasons for, good (and bad) practice. It concludes that factors like committed local leadership, central monitoring of performance, articulate civil society organisations and the availability of information are critical. But even with these, there is no guarantee that decentralised decision‐making will be inclusive of the poor. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Gauging the Effects of Social Accountability on Services,Governance, and Citizen Empowerment

Engaging citizens in holding public officials and service providers accountable, referred to as social accountability, is a popular remedy for public sector performance weaknesses, figuring prominently in many international donor‐funded projects and leading to widespread replication. However, the contextual factors that influence the successful transfer of social accountability are debated. Demand‐side factors (civil society and citizens) are overemphasized in much of the literature. Yet supply‐side factors (state structures and processes) and the nature of state–society relations are also important. This article examines four projects in developing countries to explore how these contextual factors influenced social accountability aims and outcomes. The salience of supply factors in enabling social accountability for service delivery and government performance stands out, particularly the degree of decentralization and the availability of space for citizen engagement. The capacity and motivation of citizens to occupy the available space, aggregate and voice their concerns, and participate with state actors in assessing service delivery performance and problems are critical.     

Strengthening the Intergovernmental Grant System: Long-Term Lessons for the Federal–Local Relationship

This study investigates the longitudinal political and administrative problems associated with federal–local government relations. The findings demonstrate four primary challenges of the system of federal grants-in-aid that hinder the relationship of policy design at the federal level and policy implementation in local communities: the politics of decentralization, subnational capacity, program accountability and program adaptability. A case study of the Community Development Block Grant, as assessed by the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations and the General Accounting Office between 1974 and the present, is included to demonstrate the application of these problems within the system. Although the "evolution of devolution" can greatly benefit the recipients of public services at the local level, it often operates within an unorganized and ineffective system that public managers at all levels of government must continue to develop.     

Decentralized Governance under Centralized Party Rule in Ethiopia: The Tigray Experience

Abstract

In the mid-1990s Ethiopia adopted a federal constitution promising regional autonomy and the creation and strengthening of local government units below the regional level. Some observers attribute the various shortcomings of Ethiopian federalism that have emerged since then to the original institutional/constitutional design. This paper, however, argues that what is not in the constitution has come to influence the workings of decentralization more than what is codified in it. The dominant national party in power, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), either directly or through affiliates, controls political office at all levels of government, thereby limiting the room for local initiative and autonomy. The presence of a national dominant party limits the responsiveness and downward accountability of Wereda (district) authorities; it also undermines political competition, and by extension, good governance at the grassroots level. The paper is based on field research carried out in the Tigray regional state of Ethiopia. The conclusion is that when one party dominates the politics of the region and its institutions, extra-constitutional intra-party politics determine how things work, thereby subjugating localities’ autonomy and impeding their ability to deliver on promises of decentralization.     

On the problems of responsibility and accountability in referendums

Abstract.  Supporters of representative democracy tend to be critical of referendums. They argue that referendums give citizens more responsibility for political decisions than they have either the capacity or the competence to take. Moreover, they argue that referendums may undermine representatives' accountability. In this article, these arguments about responsibility and accountability are analyzed in the light of normative theories of democracy, especially the theory of deliberative democracy. Furthermore, different institutional forms of referendum are analyzed. Particular attention is paid to the following aspects: the extent to which governments control the use of referendums, how referendums interact with parliamentary decision making, and whether referendums are advisory or binding. It is argued that sometimes governments indeed use their control over referendums to avoid taking stands on difficult issues. More importantly, however, current forms of government-initiated referendums tend to weaken the accountability of the representatives, at least when interpreted in terms of liberal and deliberative democracy, and to distort parliamentary deliberations. Since delegation is a necessity in modern democracies, referendums should not undermine the mechanisms of representative democracy. In addition to the issues of citizens' capacity and competence, this viewpoint should be taken into account when designing referendum institutions.     

Explaining Regional and Local Government: An Empirical Test of the Decentralization Theorem

Decentralization of policy provision is omnipresent yet we are not able to sufficiently account for the extent of this phenomenon. The decentralization theorem explains the decentralization of policy provision as a trade‐off between heterogenous preferences, interjurisdictional spillovers (externalities), and economies of scale. Empirical tests of the theorem have been hampered by a measurement problem on the independent as well as on the dependent variable. This article tackles these problems by using a new data set that combines a measure of externalities and scale effects of policies obtained from an expert survey with the actual provision of policies across governmental tiers in 40 countries. The analyses provide an empirical test of the decentralization theorem by showing that decentralization of policy provision is to a large extent determined by functional characteristics of policies and heterogenous preferences but other country‐specific variables, such as democracy, economic development, and European subsidies, also matter.     

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.     

Local government discretion and accountability in Burkina Faso

Burkina Faso opted for a progressive approach to decentralization reforms, aiming at building local government capacity first before transferring responsibilities. We employ a diagnostic framework to analyze local government discretion and accountability in Burkina Faso. We find that local governments have a very low degree of discretionary power accompanied with weak accountability towards citizens at all levels. In the political and administrative spheres, the center plays a dominant role in local government affairs leaving little space for discretion. In the fiscal sphere, taxing powers are restricted, while transfers are insufficient and unpredictable, making local financial management extremely difficult. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The centralization vs decentralization tug of war and the emerging narrative of fiscal federalism for social policy in India

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the relationship between fiscal federalism and social policy in India through an analysis of the effects of a recent effort to increase fiscal decentralization to state governments on the nature of social policy investment at the sub-national level. Through its analysis, this paper highlights the persistence of a strong centralisation bias in India’s fiscal architecture for social policy. We trace this centralisation bias to the political and administrative dynamics of the federal bargain. The peculiar dynamics of this bargain have created a context where the core goal of centralization – to ensure equity – is undermined while the expectation of decentralization – greater accountability through alignment of expenditure with local needs and preferences, fails to take root. India is thus likely to continue to witness significant regional variation in social policy outcomes, despite a centralised financing architecture.     

公民参与式民主理论的拓展——异体问责的视角

公民参与式民主能够完善异体问责的理论和发展路径,而异体问责作为公民参与式民主的重要体现,能够为公民参与式民主的发展提供新视角。公民参与式民主理论强调公民与政府的双向互动,公民可以通过制度保证对政府管理进行监督问责,政府必须对公民监督问责做出积极回应并改善行政管理。民主模式从古希腊城邦的直接民主发展到近现代的代议制民主,20世纪中后期,随着时代的发展和科技的进步,参与式民主理论在对代议制民主的批判和重构中逐渐发展成熟。在该理论指导下的参与式民主实践逐步深入,从而加强了公民作为政府异体问责主体的地位,在具体实践中体现为宏观领域的行政民主、中观领域的电子民主、微观领域的工业民主。     

Improving the democratic accountability of EU intelligence

The 9/11 attack and the ‘war on terrorism’ have been followed by a discussion on intelligence deficits. However, surprisingly little attention has been given to the issue of agencies' democratic accountability. This article argues the benefits of oversight for democracy and its significance for the improvement of services' performance. It puts EU intelligence agencies, which have hardly been the subject of any debate, at the centre. While acknowledging that the major threats to civil liberties of European citizens are posed by national intelligence agencies, it identifies the establishment of mechanisms for quality control of EU intelligence as the main challenge at the EU level.     

Decentralization as a conflict transformation tool: The challenge in Kosovo

Perspectives are divided on whether decentralization can ease ethnic conflict. This article considers whether asymmetric decentralization reforms in Kosovo have reduced tensions between Kosovo Albanians (K‐Albanians) and Serbs (K‐Serbs). We argue that because decentralization has been linked to Kosovo's sovereignty in the years after the NATO bombings, during the final status talks, and after independence, it has not achieved intended outcomes throughout the territory of Kosovo. Instead of assuaging tensions and generating allegiance to the central government, decentralization has re‐inforced ethnic divisions and strengthened K‐Serb ties to Serbia, particularly in northern Kosovo. Concessions to majority Serb municipalities in Kosovo have been seen by K‐Serbs as a bribe to buy acceptance of independence, while K‐Albanians question their leaders' continued policy of asymmetric decentralization. Since independence, there have been some encouraging developments in southern municipalities, where K‐Serbs have participated in municipal elections organized by Pristina. Based on Kosovo's experience, we argue that policy‐makers must consider the impact of decentralization reforms at multiple levels of conflict. Further, although we find that decentralization may engage minorities in political processes if reforms are attempted after the establishment of a central government, we caution that it must be combined with policies to encourage interaction and dialogue between ethnic groups if it is to assuage conflict. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Accountability in World Politics1

World politics has never been a democratic realm. Now, with interdependence and globalization prompting demands for global governance, the lack of global democracy has become an important public issue. Yet the domestic analogy is unhelpful since the conditions for electoral democracy, much less participatory democracy, do not exist on a global level. Rather than abandoning democratic principles, we should rethink our ambitions. First, we should emphasize, in our normative as well as our positive work, the role played by information in facilitating international cooperation and democratic discourse. Second, we should define feasible objectives such as limiting potential abuses of power, rather than aspiring to participatory democracy and then despairing of its impossibility. Third, we should focus as much on the powerful entities that are the core of the problem, including multinational firms and states, as on multilateral organizations, which often are the focus of criticism. Finally, we need to think about how to design a pluralistic accountability system for world politics that relies on a variety of types of accountability: supervisory, fiscal, legal, market, peer and reputational. A challenge for contemporary political science is to design such a system, which could promote both democratic values and effective international cooperation.     

Economic Democracy: The Left's Big Idea for the Twenty-First Century?

While the notion that parts of the economy should be subject to democratic oversight is not particularly new, it is only recently that the term “economic democracy” has begun to emerge as a political label and a political project in its own right. Interest in economic democracy is at a historical high as more and more people search for a comprehensive alternative to neoliberal capitalism that is neither state socialism nor social democracy. In addition, the fact that mainstream concern with economic inequality is at a historical peak means that economic arrangements are on the political agenda in a way that they have not been for many years. The central argument of this article is that economic democracy has the potential to be the “big idea” of the left this century for two main reasons. First, although economic democracy is usually thought to be concerned solely with workplaces, in fact it has implications far beyond this. Indeed, economic democracy is best understood as a comprehensive critique of the economy and a corresponding encompassing vision of an alternative. This article thus aims to offer a sympathetic overview of the main facets of economic democracy—the attempt to democratize workplaces, finance, investment, and the market system—as a holistic and integrative project. Second, economic democracy offers an important method for challenging inequality. The expansion of democratic accountability through representation, and particularly the expansion of opportunity for direct participation in economic decision-making is a fundamentally important method of redressing the structural inequality that continues to be a defining dilemma of our societies.