The Quality of Democratic Accountability: A Comparative View of Latin America

Abstract

Completion of the third wave of democratization in Latin America has led to a significant renewal of the comparative political agenda. Matters related to democratic transition and consolidation are no longer regarded with such interest; instead, attention is focused more on the characteristics and performance of the new democracies. One of these matters of interest is that of accountability institutions and mechanisms, bearing in mind their importance for a democracy's quality. It is widely recognized that poor performance of control mechanisms of political power leads to serious problems for a democracy, such as corruption or arbitrariness in public decisions.In spite of the importance this issue has attained, there is a lack of comparative large n studies on the characteristics and the performance of the accountability mechanisms established in the Latin American democracies. This study aims to make a contribution in this respect. In particular, it seeks to answer three basic questions. (1) How can the quality of democratic accountability be measured and evaluated? (2) Are there clear differences among the Latin American democracies in regard to the quality of democratic accountability? And (3), if there are differences in the quality levels, what reasons can explain them?In order to answer these questions, the work has been structured into four sections. The first presents the concept of accountability, its principal types and its importance. In the second section, an operationalization of the notion of quality of accountability is considered and, on this basis, a Acknowledgments: I am grateful for the support offered by Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad de España (project CSO2011-24344), Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya) and three colleagues: Joan Balcells, Albert Padró-Solanet and Leticia M. Ruiz. I also thank the three CJPS reviewers for their useful comments. None is responsible for remaining errors.

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