Search

This paper develops and applies the concept of accountability styles for analyzing and comparing accountability practices in different countries. This is relevant as there is considerable scholarship on public sector accountability but only very few comparative studies. Extant studies have shown that national styles of accountability are both marked by convergence as well as the resilience of national differences. The concept of accountability style is adopted to describe and interpret how and why accountability practices differ between administrative systems. It does so by analyzing practices of accountability of public sector agencies in four European democracies with different state traditions: the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland and the UK. These countries vary with regards to state strength (interventionist propensity) and administrative concentration (high or low centralization). The analysis focuses on the accountability of arms' length agencies which lends itself for comparisons across counties. The paper shows that the national political-administrative context crucially shapes practices of accountability and accountability regimes of agencies. The Norwegian accountability style is characterized as 'centralized and convenient'. The UK-style is equally centralized yet not so convenient as it incurs high accountability-process costs on agencies. Switzerland is marked by limited hierarchical accountability. And the Dutch accountability style is comparatively 'broad and informal'. State strength and administrative concentration explain some of the variance while historical legacies explain additional national variations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many advanced liberal democracies exhibit 'democracy deserts' in which high levels of social exclusion among large sections of the population are compounded by low levels of democratic engagement. How to reverse declining levels of electoral participation and widespread public disenchantment with politics therefore forms a defining element of contemporary comparative politics. It is in this context that the processes and methods associated with 'deliberative democracy' have become significant. Whereas most research in this field has focused on experiments at the local or community level, this article utilises a comparative case-study approach to examine the recent use of deliberative mechanisms in relation to constitutional issues. By comparing the establishment of citizen's assemblies with varying powers to review and make recommendations on electoral reform in the Canadian province of British Columbia and in the Netherlands and then contrasting this with a polity where a highly-majoritarian elite has reneged on pre-election commitments to review the electoral system (the United Kingdom), this article contributes a distinctive perspective to broader debates on public disengagement, deliberative democracy, political geography, majoritarian modification and electoral reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]