Complainants’ Views about Civilian Review of the Police: A Study of the Philippines

In search of effective control of the police, several countries have created civilian review boards. The Philippines recently adopted such an approach by establishing the People’s Law Enforcement Board (PLEB). The board is envisioned to enable citizens to participate in the process of police control. This study examines the perceptions of complainants about the board in a metropolitan area in the Philippines. Using surveys, the study aims to determine the integrity, legitimacy, and efficiency of the board as well as the satisfaction of complainants with the review board. The findings suggest that complainants were highly satisfied with the People’s Law Enforcement Board. Complainants also showed great concern for the legitimacy of the board and the timely resolutions of their cases. In addition, the study confirms previous studies’ findings on the predominant influence of case outcomes on complainants’ satisfaction.

Accountability infrastructures: Pragmatic compliance inside organizations

We trace the pragmatic turn in regulatory governance from the level of the state and civil society to the coalface of the regulated organization. Since the 1980s, an array of new regulatory models has emerged. These models, while distinct, are unified in two related tendencies. First, they support the devolution of responsibility for standard setting, program design, and enforcement to the regulated organization. This delegation of governance to the organization itself has catalyzed the creation of accountability infrastructures within organizations, a network of offices, roles, programs, and procedures dedicated to aligning the organization's operations with external standards, codes of conduct, ethical and normative expectations, and regulations. Second, the diverse regulatory models depend, often implicitly, on organizational accountability infrastructures that incorporate the tenets of pragmatist philosophy: inquiry through narration, adaptation to context, and problem-solving through experimentation. Reviewing the empirical literature on organizational compliance, we find ample evidence of inquiry through narration at the organizational coalface. However, we find limited evidence of narrating plurality in the organization and narrating experimentation as problem-solving, as these activities create tensions with internal and external parties who expect singular, stable representations of governance. These tensions reveal an important incongruity between pragmatic governance across organizations and pragmatic governance within organizations. We contribute to the regulatory governance literature by documenting this important shift in the locus of governance to the organizational coalface and by charting a new research agenda. We argue that examinations of regulatory governance should be retraced in three ways. First, attention should shift to the organizational coalface, recognizing and analyzing accountability infrastructures as the central contemporary mechanism of governance. Second, the long-standing focus in regulatory studies on why parties comply should shift to understanding how regulated parties manage themselves to achieve compliance. Third, analyses of compliance should examine the tensions in narrating adaptation and experimentation, and the implications of such tensions for the achievement of prosocial outcomes.     

Regulatory enforcement against organizational insiders: Interactions in the pursuit of individual accountability

The UK Financial Conduct Authority has developed and implemented policies targeting individuals for regulatory non-compliance in the post-2008 crisis period. This article develops a tripartite framework that differentiates between individual–firm, regulator–individual, and regulator–firm interactions to capture the complexity of these enforcement proceedings. Drawing on interviews with stakeholders, administrative decisionmaking observations, and documentary analysis, it outlines the process of individualizing responsibility for non-compliance and finds that this approach poses evidential and investigative challenges for the regulator as a result of individual and corporate responses. The evidence shows that individuals are more likely than firms to engage in an adversarial response to an investigation rather than to settle. At the same time, through an inverse process of “corporatization” of the enforcement proceedings, firms may employ resources and strategies aimed at obscuring individual responsibility or binding together more closely the corporate and the individual case. The article concludes that the prospects of a successful outcome in investigating individuals depend not only on regulators' activities but also on corporate responses and on which managers are considered assets to the firm and which may be thrown to the wolves.     

Toward “hardened” accountability? Analyzing the European Union's hybrid transnational governance in timber and biofuel supply chains

The voluntary/mandatory divide is a constant feature of scholarly debates on corporate accountability for sustainability in global supply chains. A widely held assumption is that the addition of state authority to private transnational governance in global supply chains will “harden” accountability and, thus, promote more sustainable production. The state's ability to set legally binding requirements is expected to coerce companies into complying. The hybridization of private and state authority is seen to strengthen good practice in private authority. This empirical study questions these assumptions based on an analysis of two hybrid governance arrangements for sustainability in global supply chains: the EU's Timber Regulation (EUTR) and Renewable Energy Directive (RED). The results demonstrate that both EUTR and EU-RED yield sector wide efforts of compliance and to this extent can be seen as enhancing accountability in the sense of answerability. At the same time, we find that the policies in both cases are not more demanding, nor enforced strictly, the latter putting into question their potential to coerce companies. Further, a “hardening” of accountability is at least obscured as both EUTR and EU-RED have stripped private authority they employ in their hybrid transnational governance from the need to establish legitimacy with a broader audience. This makes legal compliance and cost-effectiveness the core factor for companies’ efforts to demonstrate compliance. Our findings hence question whether the EUTR and EU-RED have led to “hardened” accountability compared to private transnational governance, and ask for an empirical, more nuanced understanding of what there is to gain or lose from hybridizing private and state authority in transnational governance.     

市场信用监管的政府责任及其实现机制

实践表明,构建以信用为基础的新型监管机制对政府的市场监管具有重要的基础意义。本文综合学理和实践视野,探讨了市场信用监管体系的构成特征,即市场信用监管是以信用信息为基石的一系列制度安排的集合,是实现全方位监管、全过程监管、精准化监管的集合。其核心价值是完善市场资源有效配置机制,降低制度性交易成本和促进新型市场监管体系全面升级。采用制度主义的视角分析了政府在市场信用监管中的制度供给、制度执行、制度维护和制度创新四大政府责任,并用结构-过程的视角结合具体实践分析了事前、事中、事后阶段以及全过程监管中可创新的一系列监管规则和制度。     

论我国官员问责的制约因素与解构

现代化进程中的中国官员问责已取得了实质性的进展和愈益明显的成效.然而,从社会系统论角度来看,当代中国官员问责进程尚遭遇三种因素的制约:一是官员问责认知上的制约,二是现行问责制度设计因素的制约,三是问责外部社会环境的制约.因此,深入剖析当代中国官员问责的制约因素,探究消除这些制约因素的有效途径,对于依法治国,建设有中国特色的社会主义官员问责制,实现社会主义法治国家的价值目标有着重要的现实指导意义.     

The promises and realities of Ghana's decentralization: a case study from the Wenchi district of Ghana

This article explores the functioning of the decentralized structures in Wenchi district of Ghana with the view of generating deeper insights into the interplay between decentralization outcomes and prevailing social, economic, and cultural realties of the people. Data were collected from both secondary and primary sources. The main findings of the study indicate that sub-district structures do not provide an effective platform for citizen participation. Elections were found to primarily be an instrument for demanding accountability from assembly members. Finally, field services were found not to be responsive to the needs of citizens.     

In Defence of British Politics Against the British Political Tradition

This article explores some of the current themes round the perceived crisis in British politics in supposed an age of ‘anti‐politics’. Drawing on Bernard Crick's In Defence of Politics, it offers a critique of what is referred to as a dominant British political tradition and in so doing seeks to challenge ‘demand‐side’ accounts that ostensibly defend the traditional arena politics of the Westminster system. Instead, it argues that developments around issues such as big data, social media and freedom of information have led to a more open society in recent years. It concludes by suggesting that if traditional political institutions wish to restore a greater degree of legitimacy, they need to ‘do’ or, more particularly, ‘supply’ politics differently, adapting to these changes by seeking out new modes of openness, engagement and accountability.     

Patronage,politics and performance: radio call-in programmes and the myth of accountability

The role of media in promoting political accountability and citizen participation is a central issue in governance debates. Drawing on research into the interactions between radio station owners, journalists, audiences and public authorities during Somali radio call-in programmes we argue that these programmes do not simply offer a new platform for citizens to challenge those who are governing but that they are also spaces where existing power structures reproduce themselves in new forms. We identify the ways the programmes are structured and the different motivations the audience has for participation. Three types of programmes are identified and their relationships with patronage, politics, and performance are examined. Rather than focusing on normative assumptions about the media as a tool of accountability, the article emphasises the importance of understanding radio programmes in their social and political environment, including the overlapping relationships between on-air and off-air networks.