IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jadmsc/v11y2021i4p127-d674420.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Accountable Government through Collaborative Governance?

Author

Listed:
  • Eva Sørensen

    (Department of Social Sciences, NORD University, 8049 Nordland, Norway
    Department of Social Sciences and Business, Roskilde University, 4000 Roskilde, Denmark)

  • Jacob Torfing

    (Department of Social Sciences, NORD University, 8049 Nordland, Norway
    Department of Social Sciences and Business, Roskilde University, 4000 Roskilde, Denmark)

Abstract

Governance researchers have repeatedly discussed how to make public governance more accountable given the relatively ‘thin’ accountability of representative government. Recent decades have seen the growth of new, compensatory forms of accountability. However, these measures do not seem have satisfied the demands for strengthening public sector accountability. Drawing on the concept of social accountability, this article challenges common wisdom in arguing that collaborative governance may enhance public governance accountability, although it also raises new accountability problems that must be tackled. The article develops a heuristic framework for empirical studies of accountability, which improves the impact of collaborative forms of governance.

Suggested Citation

  • Eva Sørensen & Jacob Torfing, 2021. "Accountable Government through Collaborative Governance?," Administrative Sciences, MDPI, vol. 11(4), pages 1-20, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jadmsc:v:11:y:2021:i:4:p:127-:d:674420
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3387/11/4/127/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3387/11/4/127/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Leonardo Rinaldi & Charles H. Cho & Sumit K. Lodhia & Giovanna Michelon & Carol A. Tilt, 2020. "Accounting in times of the COVID-19 pandemic: a forum for academic research," Accounting Forum, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(3), pages 180-183, July.
    2. Gerry Stoker & Peter John, 2009. "Design Experiments: Engaging Policy Makers in the Search for Evidence about What Works," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 57(2), pages 356-373, June.
    3. Florian Schatz, 2013. "Fighting Corruption With Social Accountability: A Comparative Analysis Of Social Accountability Mechanisms' Potential To Reduce Corruption In Public Administration," Public Administration & Development, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 33(3), pages 161-174, August.
    4. Joris Voets & Koen Verhoest & Astrid Molenveld, 2015. "Coordinating for Integrated Youth Care: The need for smart metagovernance," Public Management Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(7), pages 981-1001, August.
    5. Warren, Mark E., 2011. "Voting with Your Feet: Exit-based Empowerment in Democratic Theory," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 105(4), pages 683-701, November.
    6. Gerry Stoker & Peter John, 2009. "Design Experiments: Engaging Policy Makers in the Search for Evidence about What Works," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 57, pages 356-373, June.
    7. Fox, Jonathan A., 2015. "Social Accountability: What Does the Evidence Really Say?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 346-361.
    8. Carmine Bianchi & Greta Nasi & William C. Rivenbark, 2021. "Implementing collaborative governance: models, experiences, and challenges," Public Management Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(11), pages 1581-1589, November.
    9. Thomas Schillemans, 2008. "Accountability in the Shadow of Hierarchy: The Horizontal Accountability of Agencies," Public Organization Review, Springer, vol. 8(2), pages 175-194, June.
    10. De Benedictis-Kessner, Justin & Warshaw, Christopher, 2020. "Accountability for the Local Economy at All Levels of Government in United States Elections," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 114(3), pages 660-676, August.
    11. ., 2021. "NAV by government committee," Chapters, in: Investigation Reports, chapter 6, pages 83-99, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    12. Alford, 2014. "The Multiple Facets of Co-Production: Building on the work of Elinor Ostrom," Public Management Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(3), pages 299-316, April.
    13. Sam Hickey & Sophie King, 2016. "Understanding Social Accountability: Politics, Power and Building New Social Contracts," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 52(8), pages 1225-1240, August.
    14. Ansell,Christopher & Torfing,Jacob, 2021. "Public Governance as Co-creation," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781108487047, October.
    15. Scott Ashworth & Ethan Bueno de Mesquita & Amanda Friedenberg, 2017. "Accountability and Information in Elections," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(2), pages 95-138, May.
    16. Lührmann, Anna & Marquardt, Kyle L. & Mechkova, Valeriya, 2020. "Constraining Governments: New Indices of Vertical, Horizontal, and Diagonal Accountability," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 114(3), pages 811-820, August.
    17. Neblo, Michael A. & Esterling, Kevin M. & Kennedy, Ryan P. & Lazer, David M.J. & Sokhey, Anand E., 2010. "Who Wants To Deliberate—And Why?," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 104(3), pages 566-583, August.
    18. Tom Christensen & Per Lægreid, 2015. "Performance and Accountability—A Theoretical Discussion and an Empirical Assessment," Public Organization Review, Springer, vol. 15(2), pages 207-225, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Aleksander Aristovnik & Eva Murko & Dejan Ravšelj, 2022. "From Neo-Weberian to Hybrid Governance Models in Public Administration: Differences between State and Local Self-Government," Administrative Sciences, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-19, February.
    2. Xiaoqin Guo & Xiang Li, 2022. "A Study on Community Public Safety Collaborative Governance Regime in the Background of COVID-19: Empirical Analysis Based on China and South Korea," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(21), pages 1-22, October.
    3. Dejan Ravšelj & Lan Umek & Ljupčo Todorovski & Aleksander Aristovnik, 2022. "A Review of Digital Era Governance Research in the First Two Decades: A Bibliometric Study," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 14(5), pages 1-27, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ansell, Christopher K. & Bartenberger, Martin, 2016. "Varieties of experimentalism," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 64-73.
    2. Claire A Dunlop, 2014. "The Possible Experts: How Epistemic Communities Negotiate Barriers to Knowledge Use in Ecosystems Services Policy," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 32(2), pages 208-228, April.
    3. Laurent Hazard & Nathalie Couix & Camille Lacombe, 2022. "From evidence to value-based transition: the agroecological redesign of farming systems," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 39(1), pages 405-416, March.
    4. Warren Pearce & Sujatha Raman, 2014. "The new randomised controlled trials (RCT) movement in public policy: challenges of epistemic governance," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 47(4), pages 387-402, December.
    5. Jean-Benoit Falisse & Hugues Nkengurutse, 2022. "Citizens Committees and Local Elites: Elite Capture, Captured Elites, and Absent Elites in Health Facility Committees," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 34(3), pages 1662-1683, June.
    6. Gerry Stoker, 2010. "Translating Experiments into Policy," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 628(1), pages 47-58, March.
    7. Abu Elias Sarker & Syed Awais Ahmad Tipu & Farhana Razzaque, 2022. "An Integrative Dynamic Framework of Social Accountability: Determinants, Initiatives, and Outcomes," Public Organization Review, Springer, vol. 22(1), pages 117-133, March.
    8. Adam S. Harris & Brigitte Seim & Rachel Sigman, 2020. "Information, accountability and perceptions of public sector programme success: A conjoint experiment among bureaucrats in Africa," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 38(5), pages 594-612, September.
    9. Gerry Stoker, 2010. "Exploring the Promise of Experimentation in Political Science: Micro‐Foundational Insights and Policy Relevance," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 58(2), pages 300-319, March.
    10. Fischer, Harry W., 2021. "Decentralization and the governance of climate adaptation: Situating community-based planning within broader trajectories of political transformation," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    11. Broström, Anders & McKelvey, Maureen, 2016. "Knowledge transfer at the science-policy interface: How cognitive distance and the degree of expert autonomy shapes the outcome," Working Paper Series in Economics and Institutions of Innovation 441, Royal Institute of Technology, CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies.
    12. Alawattage, Chandana & Azure, John De-Clerk, 2021. "Behind the World Bank’s ringing declarations of “social accountability”: Ghana’s public financial management reform," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    13. John Gaventa & Anuradha Joshi & Colin Anderson, 2023. "Citizen action for accountability in challenging contexts: What have we learned?," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 41(S1), March.
    14. Steven Donbavand & Bryony Hoskins, 2021. "Citizenship Education for Political Engagement: A Systematic Review of Controlled Trials," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 10(5), pages 1-19, April.
    15. Eric Chu & Todd Schenk & James Patterson, 2018. "The Dilemmas of Citizen Inclusion in Urban Planning and Governance to Enable a 1.5 °C Climate Change Scenario," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 3(2), pages 128-140.
    16. Guillaume Martin & Sandrine Allain & Jacques-Eric Bergez & Delphine Burger-Leenhardt & Julie Constantin & Michel Duru & Laurent Hazard & Camille Lacombe & Danièle Magda & Marie-Angélina Magne & Julie , 2018. "How to Address the Sustainability Transition of Farming Systems? A Conceptual Framework to Organize Research," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(6), pages 1-20, June.
    17. Michael McGann & Emma Blomkamp & Jenny M. Lewis, 2018. "The rise of public sector innovation labs: experiments in design thinking for policy," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 51(3), pages 249-267, September.
    18. Shihong Guo & Qijiao Song & Ye Qi, 2021. "Innovation or implementation? Local response to low‐carbon policy experimentation in China," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 38(5), pages 555-569, September.
    19. Tomic, Slobodan & Rauh, William Jonathan, 2023. "How Political Culture Shapes Horizontal Accountability Outcomes: Evidence from 62 Countries," SocArXiv uf3nw, Center for Open Science.
    20. Dean Neu & Gregory D. Saxton & Abu S. Rahaman, 2022. "Social Accountability, Ethics, and the Occupy Wall Street Protests," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 180(1), pages 17-31, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jadmsc:v:11:y:2021:i:4:p:127-:d:674420. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.