“…Thirteen different executives were involved in these decisions, which all occurred between 2006 and 2010, with the exception of the Antwerp case whose history goes back to 2004. For further elaboration of the cases, see Karsten ().…”
Section: Research Strategy and Methodsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…A second actor‐beneficial motivation behind accountability‐seeking behaviour was the fact that citizens appreciated political executives being answerable and accountable. Citizens and councillors expected rather than demanded political executives to be accountable and to actively render account (see also Karsten ). Such ‘accountability demands’ are more easily met by accountability‐seeking behaviour than by accountability‐avoiding behaviour.My compliments on how you as an alderman have positioned yourself.…”
Section: Motivations Behind Accountability‐seeking Behaviour: Theory mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…A fourth way in which accountability‐seeking behaviour serves the political‐strategic interests of the accountor is that it allows political actors to shape accountability relationships to a greater extent than accountability‐avoiding behaviour. By seeking particular kinds of accountability, and avoiding others, and by willingly subjecting themselves to particular types of scrutiny, executives have some influence over to whom they are accountable, for what, through which processes and by what standard they are judged (Karsten ; see also Dowdle ; Bovens ).I did not worry needlessly about the substantive aspects of it all. … I've positioned the whole issue in terms of its procedural aspects, in an almost radical way.…”
Section: Motivations Behind Accountability‐seeking Behaviour: Theory mentioning
Voluntary accountability, where people and organizations willingly subject themselves to scrutiny, seems counterintuitive. The common understanding is that increased accountability has negative consequences for the accountor; and so why would anyone voluntarily seek accountability when it is not required? Current explanations hold that external pressures can explain accountability-seeking behaviour, and the proponents are not convinced by the argument that it is beneficial to the accountor. In contrast, this study finds that accountability often serves the accountor's interests. A six-part typology of accountor-beneficial motivations is developed, the empirical adequacy of which is tested through extensive case studies. The results show that public accountability can be a means rather than a burden in the hands of political executive leaders. These findings challenge the conventional principal-agent understanding of accountability and suggest that the study of the poorly understood practice of democratic accountability would benefit from a more leader-centric perspective.
“…Thirteen different executives were involved in these decisions, which all occurred between 2006 and 2010, with the exception of the Antwerp case whose history goes back to 2004. For further elaboration of the cases, see Karsten ().…”
Section: Research Strategy and Methodsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…A second actor‐beneficial motivation behind accountability‐seeking behaviour was the fact that citizens appreciated political executives being answerable and accountable. Citizens and councillors expected rather than demanded political executives to be accountable and to actively render account (see also Karsten ). Such ‘accountability demands’ are more easily met by accountability‐seeking behaviour than by accountability‐avoiding behaviour.My compliments on how you as an alderman have positioned yourself.…”
Section: Motivations Behind Accountability‐seeking Behaviour: Theory mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…A fourth way in which accountability‐seeking behaviour serves the political‐strategic interests of the accountor is that it allows political actors to shape accountability relationships to a greater extent than accountability‐avoiding behaviour. By seeking particular kinds of accountability, and avoiding others, and by willingly subjecting themselves to particular types of scrutiny, executives have some influence over to whom they are accountable, for what, through which processes and by what standard they are judged (Karsten ; see also Dowdle ; Bovens ).I did not worry needlessly about the substantive aspects of it all. … I've positioned the whole issue in terms of its procedural aspects, in an almost radical way.…”
Section: Motivations Behind Accountability‐seeking Behaviour: Theory mentioning
Voluntary accountability, where people and organizations willingly subject themselves to scrutiny, seems counterintuitive. The common understanding is that increased accountability has negative consequences for the accountor; and so why would anyone voluntarily seek accountability when it is not required? Current explanations hold that external pressures can explain accountability-seeking behaviour, and the proponents are not convinced by the argument that it is beneficial to the accountor. In contrast, this study finds that accountability often serves the accountor's interests. A six-part typology of accountor-beneficial motivations is developed, the empirical adequacy of which is tested through extensive case studies. The results show that public accountability can be a means rather than a burden in the hands of political executive leaders. These findings challenge the conventional principal-agent understanding of accountability and suggest that the study of the poorly understood practice of democratic accountability would benefit from a more leader-centric perspective.
“…Second, figures show that the call for stronger leadership was stronger in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s ( SCP, 2011 ). Third, to the extent that there is indeed a noticeable call for leadership, it is often qualified as being ‘ambiguous’ ( Karsten, 2013 ) or ‘dubious’ ( Frissen, 2009 ). Rather than as a genuine desire for decisive leaders, the call of leadership is seen as the unsolicited result of a feeling of confusion ( ‘t Hart, 2005 ).…”
Section: A Multidimensional Aversion To Leadershipmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…This is because citizens express a demand for administrative decisiveness, but at the same time want their leaders to be highly responsive to their interests. Citizens seem to call for stronger leadership, but whereas this is an essential part of strong leadership not for the kind of directive leadership that acts against their wishes ( Karsten, 2013 ; see also Dunn, 1999 ; see also Kane and Patapan, 2012 ). It might thus be that, rather than a call for heroic forms of leadership, we are witnessing an inarticulate call for responsiveness and good governance.…”
Section: A Multidimensional Aversion To Leadershipmentioning
In some democratic contexts, there is a strong aversion to the directive, individualistic and masculine expressions of leadership that have come to dominate the study of political leadership. Such leadership is antithetical to consensus democracies in parts of continental Europe, where the antipathy to leadership has linguistic, institutional as well as cultural dimensions. Political-administrative and socio-cultural contexts in these countries provide little room for heroic expressions of leadership. Consequently, alternative forms of leadership and associated vocabularies have developed that carry profound practical relevance but that have remained underexplored. Based on an in-depth mixed-methods study, this article presents the Dutch mayoralty as an insightful and exemplary case of what can be called ‘bridging-and-bonding leadership’; it provides a clear illustration of how understandings of democratic leadership can deviate from the dominant paradigm and of how leading in a consensus context brings about unique practical challenges for office holders. The analysis shows that the important leadership task of democratic guardianship that is performed by Dutch mayors is in danger of being overlooked by scholars of political leadership, as are consensus-oriented leadership roles in other parts of the world. For that reason, a recalibration of the leadership concept is needed, developing an increased theoretical sensitivity towards the non-decisive and process-oriented aspects of the leadership phenomenon. This article specifies how the future study of leadership, as a part of the change that is advocated, can benefit from adopting additional languages of leadership.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
