Pathologies of Accountability: ICANN and the Challenge of "Multiple Accountabilities Disorder"

Accountability is a core concept of public administration, yet disagreement about its meaning is masked by consensus on its importance and desirability. This article proposes a five-part typology of accountability conceptions. Transparency, liability, controllability, responsibility, and responsiveness are defined as distinct dimensions of accountability, providing an improvement on the current state of conceptual fuzziness. The typology provides a vocabulary for the core argument: that conflicting expectations borne of disparate conceptions of accountability undermine organizational effectiveness. This phenomenon—labeled multiple accountabilities disorder—is illustrated with a case study. ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, is a nascent organization charged with administering the Domain Name System, the Internet's address directory. In its four-year history, ICANN has been the object of much criticism. Conflicting accountability expectations have been a source of difficulty for ICANN's leaders as they have steered the organization through its early years.     

The Misquantification of Probative Value

D. Davis and W. C. Follette (2002) purport to show that when "the base rate" for a crime is low, the probative value of "characteristics known to be strongly associated with the crime ... will be virtually nil." Their analysis rests on the choice of an arbitrary and inopposite measure of the probative value of evidence. When a more suitable metric is used (e.g., a likelihood ratio), it becomes clear that evidence they would dismiss as devoid of probative value is relevant and diagnostic.     

Reviewers for Volume 27

Editorial Board

Reviewers for Volume 27     

The business firm model of party organisation: Cases from Spain and Italy

Abstract. Discussion of new forms of party organisation have largely focused on the ways in which institutionalised parties have adapted to pressures towards 'catch–all' or 'electoral–professional' behaviour. This article examines the ways in which new parties respond to these pressures. A model of the 'party as business firm' is generated from rational choice assumptions and it is suggested that such a model can emerge when new party systems are created in advanced societies. Two cases of political parties which resemble the business firm model in important ways are analysed in order to gauge the consequences of this type of party organisation: UCD in Spain and Forza Italia in Italy. On the basis of this analysis it is argued that business firm parties are likely to be electorally unstable and politically incoherent, and also prone to serving particularistic interests.     

What Makes a State Advocacy Structure Effective? — Conflicts Between Bureaucratic and Social Movement Criteria

State "advocacy structures"—agencies nominally designated to advance the status of collective social movements in public policy and society—must operate under conflicting criteria for "effectiveness." While government actors likely measure effectiveness as the ability to manage a policyissue—advancing policy influence by prioritizing and packaging demands —collective movements additionally or primarily emphasize structures' performance as representatives of the priorities and diversity of movements. This consequently leads to differing evaluations of agency "effectiveness." A case study of the Ontario Women's Directorate (OWD) analyzes the inherent conflicts and tensions between these two roles, particularly under repeated changes in government. The experiences of the OWD and other advocacy structures suggest that conflicting criteria are inherent and unavoidable in such institutions.     

SCIENTIFICALLY CRAFTED CHILD CUSTODY EVALUATIONS

Part 1 of this two-part series proposed the use of an interdisciplinary model in the development of psycholegal questions that guide child custody evaluations. It was argued that defining the scope and focus of an evaluation at the time that a court order is entered provides a more structured and clearly defined set of questions to be researched and examined within the context of the behavioral science literature. The present article offers a conceptual model to be used in gathering and analyzing data in child custody evaluations. It is argued that the use of forensic methodology provides a more scientific basis for the information provided by the evaluator to the trier of fact, ultimately resulting in a more useful and accurate picture of the family in question.     

Brief Research Report: Age Factors Affecting the Believability of Repressed Memories of Child Sexual Assault

Two experiments investigated how mock jurors react to testimony involving claims of a repressed memory in a case involving child sexual assault. Participants read a fictional civil trial summary presented in one of three conditions: (a) immediate condition—the alleged victim testified immediately after the incident; (b) repressed condition—the alleged victim reported the assault 1–39 years later, after remembering it for the first time; or (c) not-repressed condition—the alleged victim reported the assault 1–39 years later, but the memory of the assault had been present for those years. When there was any type of delayed reporting, either the age of the alleged victim at the time of the assault was constant and her age at reporting varied (Experiment 1) or the age of the alleged victim at the time of the assault varied and her age at reporting remained constant (Experiment 2). The results showed that (1) a delay in reporting an incident adversely affected believability of the alleged victim and led to fewer rulings in support of the plaintiff compared to reporting it immediately, (2) longer delays in reporting generally led to lower alleged victim believability and fewer decisions in support of the plaintiff than shorter delays, (3) the age of the alleged victim at the time of the incident was a critical variable in determining belief of the alleged victim, and (4) men generally rated believability of the alleged victim lower and ruled in favor of the plaintiff less often than women. The results are discussed in terms of the psychosocial factors affecting the perception of delayed reporting in a child sexual assault trial.     

Two Conceptions of State: Antonio Gramsci and Michael Mann

Gramsci revised classical Marxist accounts of the role of the state in society, culture and ideology, and stressed the autonomy of the political process from the economic base. Sociologists often labelled neoWeberian also focus on social change, the state and the political process. Michael Mann, whilst remaining discrete from Marxism has nevertheless moved away from classical Weberian sociology, engaging deeply with materialism in analysing the state. This article compares the work of Gramsci and Mann regarding the state, to examine whether a genuine synthesis is possible between Gramsci (perhaps the first 'neo-Marxist') and Mann, a neoWeberian.     

The reform of academic tenure in the United Kingdom

In this paper, we examine the reform of academic tenure in the United Kingdom (UK) after the 1988 Education Reform Act.¹ We test the hypothesis that softening tenure encourages incumbent academics to consolidate their hold on academic life [ Carmichael (1988)]. We also assess the economic significance of the English and American case law on tenure, because an understanding of the legal aspects of tenure is required to identify the possible effects of tenure reform. The years after passage of the Act provide an interesting natural experiment, as the broad effect of the legislation was to soften, though not to remove, tenure in British universities. ² We can find support for the Carmichael hypothesis prereform but do not believe that the Act caused incumbent academics to consolidate their hold on senior posts after the reform.Tenure implies that the holder of a post cannot be removed from it except for good cause, usually based on gross moral turpitude or gross incompetence. Such removal is historically characterized by a costly procedure governed by organizational statutes, as shown in Hines v. Birkbeck College.³ In the United Kingdom, academic tenure has been associated with open-ended contracts of employment and often had a particularly hard form before 1988. In the United States, where it has often been possible to dismiss academics for financial reasons by abolishing whole departments, tenure has taken a softer form (although often harder to obtain) and can still be held to exist even when an employment contract is of a fixed term as long as it is renewable. ⁴ The details of universities’ tenure statutes have always varied between institutions, in both the United Kingdom and United States, which is often overlooked.

Abstract

“Before 1988, could your university make academics redundant by giving notice and paying statutory redundancy pay, or was it extremely hard to sack academics—having to buy them out or use arguments based on gross moral turpitude or incompetence?”