Public sector accountability styles in Europe comparing accountability and control of agencies in the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland and the UK

Abstract

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.

Energy efficiency, housing, and economic policy

“…This allows them to comparatively assess administrative, managerial, accommodative, and adversarial policy styles. While these present to distinct ways of empirically capturing policy styles, they are at the same time representative of the growing interest in policy styles (Casula & Malandrino, 2023; Howlett & Tosun, 2021; Newman et al, 2022; Schillemans et al, 2022).…”

“…我们认为，本刊的最新出版物能为延续EPA成就一事作贡献。时间的流逝形成了关于可持续性和数字化的新问题以及关于民主和治理的长期辩论，而过去的一年则将其中一些问题纳入了一期特刊，后者聚焦于可持续治理指标(SGI)及其在公共政策研究领域中的解释力。彼时，Tosun and Howlett (2022)撰写的富有远见的文章以SGI为手段，对政策风格进行了实证操作化。这篇文章的长期影响已经显而易见。本期中，Zahariadis等人(2023)以这一操作化为基础，使用不同的SGI概念作为问题解决和包容性模式的指标。此举使他们能够比较评估行政式、管理式、宽松式和对抗式政策风格。尽管这一切展示了“从实证上描述政策风格”的独特方法，但也代表了越来越多的研究聚焦于政策风格 (Casula & Malandrino, 2023; Howlett & Tosun, 2021; Newman et al, 2022; Schillemans et al, 2022)。…”

“…Esto les permite evaluar comparativamente los estilos de política administrativa, gerencial, acomodaticia y contradictoria. Si bien estos presentan formas distintas de capturar empíricamente los estilos de política, al mismo tiempo son representativos del creciente interés en los estilos de política (Casula y Malandrino 2023; Howlett y Tosun, 2021; Newman et al, 2022; Schillemans et al, 2022).…”

School principals’ experiences of ethical leadership during times of accountability : complexities, dilemmas and dynamics.

“…According to Lerner and Tetlock (1999), accountability is a modern buzzword in education, health care, civil and criminal justice, business, and politics. In addition, accountability is a fashionable concept in political sciences and public administration (Hu, 2017;Schillemans et al, 2022). These researchers maintain that the dominance of accountability in these different fields is being propelled by the scholarly debates in popular publications on who should answer to whom, for what and under what ground rules.…”

“…Considering these multiple accountabilities, as defined by Hall et al (2007), school principals are accountable to Member of the Executive Council (MEC), District Directors, CMs, educators, non-educators, the SGB, parents, learners, and other external stakeholders who have interests in the school's affairs. Moreover, scholars like Hu (2017); Reddick et al (2020) and Schillemans et al (2022) accentuate that these multiple accountabilities by school principals must be executed either vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. In vertical accountability, school principals as agents of change and transformation, account to their hierarchical superiors (for example, the CM and other departmental officials) for their actions, performance, decisions and even inactions (Schillemans et al, 2022).…”