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In contemporary public governance, leaders of public organizations are faced with multiple, and oftentimes conflictual, accountability claims. Drawing upon a survey of CEO's of agencies in seven countries, we explore whether and how conflictual accountability regimes relate to strategic behaviors by agency-CEO's and their political principals. The presence of conflictual accountability is experienced as a major challenge and is associated with important behavioral responses by those CEO's. This article demonstrates empirically how conflictual accountability is related to (a) controlling behaviors by principals, (b) constituency building behaviors by agencies, and (c) a general pattern of intensified contacts and information processing by both parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Issues of sustainable development, liveable cities, green infrastructure, and urban ecosystem services currently receive attention from researchers and decision-makers. Furthermore, the benefits to public wellbeing and health of high quality open spaces and green areas are now undisputed (e.g. Simson, 2008; Booth, 2005, 2006). However, with increasing pressure on urban landscapes for competing uses like housing-development green-spaces are under threat. Furthermore, austerity-driven cuts to local authority budgets mean loss of core services and skills relating to openspace management and planning. Some local authorities such as Newcastle City Council are withdrawing all expenditure on parks and community spaces. With major challenges in providing good quality urban green-spaces, the loss of most local authority countryside management services from 2008 onwards, reflects bigger problems (see Rotherham, 2014, 2015 for example). Within this wider scenario has been the growing importance of Public Private Partnerships (PPP) to deliver core environmental and green-space services in many urban areas. These have been seen as possible fixes for the current waves of austerity cuts and many local authorities such as Sheffield City Council have gone down this route. Nevertheless, real costs (financial and otherwise) of Private Finance Initiatives (PFIs) are now emerging (Syal, 2018). There are also issues of public access to information once contracts become 'commercially sensitive' and of profit-driven delivery of core 'public benefit' services. These changes threaten 'local environmental democracy' as part of a wider shift in democratic processes (Flinders, 2012, 2017). This paper examines wider issues of austerity-driven cuts to green-space services, of PFI projects, and of local environmental democracy. It takes the Sheffield streettrees initiative as an exemplar case-study to interrogate the broad concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to make a bold and provocative argument not just about the state of accountability research as a field of inquiry but also about the gap that has apparently emerged between the governors and the governed (and the professional responsibilities of scholars beyond academe in terms of public engagement). It emphasizes that “too much accountability can be as problematic as too little” and asks whether it is possible that the transition from “representative” to “monitory” democracy, which is reflected in an increasingly dense and aggressive “accountability industry” (constitutional watchdogs, audit processes, ethical guardians, investigatory agencies, regulatory boards, freedom of information legislation, quasi-judicial commissions, etc.), has actually contributed to the erosion of public support for politicians, political processes, and political institutions? It therefore seeks to challenge a number of “self-evident truths” and dares to be a little brave, to fly some kites, and risk the inevitable misunderstanding and deliberate criticism that attempting to say something different entails. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]