Accountability of Public Servants under Dominant Political Settlements of China: Effects,Challenges, and Issues

Some scholars think that accountability is attainable only under the electoral political system. However, it is argued that China could achieve some weak accountability even without general election system. How could this be achieved in China? The paper attempts to analyze this question with the following steps: first, it describes the specific accountability system by categorizing different approaches based on four dimensions, then focuses on the impacts that these approaches would have, which are based on finance, fairness and efficiency. It is concluded that under a dominant political settlement, only weak accountability exists in China, not real or strong accountability.     

Administrative Innovations and Accountability Failures: The Termination of the Spanish Telecommunications Agency

We discuss how far accountability practices may be relevant to the success of independent regulators in countries without a tradition of administrative autonomy. We develop a conceptualisation of agency accountability failures and develop an analytical framework to examine the life and termination of the Spanish regulatory agency for telecommunications, CMT (Comisión del Mercado de las Telecomunicaciones - Telecommunications Market Commission). We argue that the CMT’s termination was related, among other reasons, to accountability failures in its institutional design. The paper relies on a variety of sources, including legislation, literature, media coverage, and semistructured interviews with agency officials and several stakeholders.     

Demands,responsibility, and influence in Malawi’s participatory agricultural extension services

Participatory governance offers the potential to deliver responsive and accountable services. This article tests this expectation by looking at how members of participatory extension platforms in Malawi understand the meaning of “demand-driven” services, and allocate responsibility and influence in service provision. Results show that most respondents agree on bottom-up extension services that respond to expressed farmers’ needs (86% of respondents), and assign responsibility and influence widely across state and non-state actors. While these findings suggest that these participatory mechanisms can promote responsiveness to farmers’ needs and accountability, they also point toward different governance challenges in extension services.     

Accountability mechanisms in community-driven reconstruction in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo

A lack of accountability is often considered a root cause of conflict. Many post-conflict reconstruction efforts therefore aim to enhance accountability between authorities and the population through community-driven reconstruction programmes. This article examines the accountability mechanisms in the Tushiriki community-driven reconstruction programme in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The ethnographic research found little impact of formal programme accountability. Rather, accountability was shaped differently and had its own context-specific meaning. To make accountability more sustainable, stronger embeddedness in local institutions and more appropriate translations of abstract concepts into the local context are needed.     

The Quality of Annual Reporting by Italian Museums: An International Comparison

We study the quality of disclosure and the level of accountability of Italian museums using MPADI2 index (Wei et al. 2008; Botes et al. 2013) on a sample of 13 annual reports which, given the legal status of some entities, encompasses the activity of 93 Italian public and private museums, many of which are within the most visited in Italy and worldwide. The results allow for an international comparison with the annual reports of a panel of USA, UK and European museums which have undergone the same MPADI2 analysis, giving an interesting insight about museum different disclosing practices across countries.     

Voters’ Knowledge of Their Representatives: The Direct and Conditioned Effects of Parliamentary Work

This article examines factors that influence voters’ knowledge of their representatives, a key element in securing the responsiveness and accountability of parliamentarians. We argue that the parliamentary work of MPs (Members of Parliament) benefits incumbents through increased name recall, and that this relationship is conditional on: the incumbents’ candidacy; the voters’ political competence; and their ideological proximity with their representatives. Combining data on French MPs’ activities with a 2007 CSES post‐election survey enables us to test our hypotheses, while controlling for confounding factors. The empirical analysis demonstrates that some parliamentary activities increase the voters’ capacity to recall the name of their MPs. The latter are therefore incentivised to be responsive to and serve their constituents. However, we also find that voters’ political competence and ideological proximity with their MP alter the relationship between parliamentary work and name recall. This may potentially introduce some biases in the democratic process of accountability.     

Towards an era of official (involuntary) accountability of NGOs in India

In the recent past, governance reforms in India have resulted in the government and corporate sectors making serious efforts to enhance and showcase their accountability to their principals, namely citizens and shareholders. Similarly, NGOs have been pushed to demonstrate their accountability to multiple stakeholders, namely donors, communities and most importantly, the state. This viewpoint highlights this transition and also reflects on the changing contours of NGO accountability debates in India.     

跨行政区生态环境协同治理绩效问责机制构建与应用——基于目标管理过程的分析框架

问责目标的整体性、问责过程的有序性以及问责标准的统一性是跨行政区生态环境协同治理绩效问责机制的根本特性.基于目标管理过程分析框架,以整体性绩效责任目标的实现为中心,构建了包括绩效责任目标确定、目标执行、目标评估、目标反馈和目标改进五个环节的跨行政区生态环境协同治理绩效问责机制基本框架.通过对京津冀地区进行应用检验,证实...     

绩效问责与乡镇政府回应行为——基于Y乡案例的分析

以Y乡为案例,从问责的主客体关系、问责机制的定位与内容、问责机制的流程与方式等方面对绩效问责机制的分析表明,目标责任制这种绩效问责机制并不具备较高的问责质量;正式的问责机制会导致乡镇政府从事于非正式行为,而问责客体特征则可能是解释其正式行为的主要因素。     

贫困地区推进城乡经济一体化的思考

我国80％的人口在农村，绝大部分贫困人口也在农村，贫困地区经济发展滞后是影响小康社会建设进程的重要因素。缩小城乡差别，加快推进城乡经济一体化是实现贫困地区又好又快发展的必然路径。贫困地区推进城乡经济一体化必须用现代化理念作支撑，必须用特色化目标作引领，必须用市场化的机制作保障，必须用法制化的进程作规范。