Influence of Government Paradigms on Public Accountability: Public Administration and Network Governance

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Introduction

Accountability is a dominant concept in the democratic political discourses. It reflects trustworthiness and transparency in public administration. However, depending on the dimension from which one looks at it, accountability may mean different things (Behn, 2001, p. 3: Pollitt, 2003, p. 89: Considine, 2002, p. 22).

In the most fundamental sense, accountability bridges the dynamic relationships between citizens and systems of public administration entrusted by the citizens to act in a manner that will benefit all citizens in overall.

In democratic regimes, there exists a universal requirement for holding political leadership and administration accountable for their actions.

Political accountability is problematic since politicians presume that their obligations to the citizens would be executed in a manner that profiles master-servant relationships.

In such a relationship, matters are not answerable to the servants nor should the servants question their masters (Scott, 2000, p.41: Schmitter, 2004, p.53).

This phenomenon is common in the authoritarian systems of public administration. It infers that accountability is a concept that is only applicable to democratic systems where the administrators must respect the will of the people they serve.

People possess a myriad of mechanisms of interacting with their administration. They may be clients of a myriad of agencies. In such a situation, they seek services and benefits from various agencies serving administrative roles.

People may also interact with the administration through legal systems, which serve the principle function of providing restrictions that bind all citizens coupled with those who represent them in the government.

In such relationships, citizens constantly seek their interests to be safe guarded through accountability structures that ensure equal and paramount representation in the government by the people whom citizens appoint to make decisions on their behalf (Bovaird & Loffler, 2009).

The focus of public administration on adoption of mechanisms for ensuring that government is accountable to the client underlines the change of public administration systems from being bureaucratic.

The focus of this paper is to conduct an analysis on the changes coupled with differences in approaches of public accountability.

The paper is divided into two main sections. The first section of description considers theoretical perspectives of public accountability.

In the second section, which is the analysis part, a consideration of traditional public administration followed by new public management and then network governance is made. These approaches are then analyzed in the context of approaches of public accountability.

Description: Theoretical perspectives

For systems of governance to be acceptable by people, they need to be accountable. In the embracement of democracy, accountability is incredibly significant (Horner, Lekhi & Blaug, 2006, p. 42).

Accountable systems of governance are paramount since interaction of citizens and the government is dependent on the extent to which citizens can hold those in entrusted with power accountable (Hughes, 2003, p.240).

With regard to Martin (2006, p. 72), giving citizens an opportunity to scrutinize government is crucial since citizens bestow power to the administrators and politicians to govern on their behalf.

It is then important that citizens should be able to determine whether the power they have given the administrators is utilized in the appropriate way to ensure that the entire society benefits.

In this context, Hughes (2003) argues that accountability is significant since it marks the hallmarks of a democratic system of governance (p.241). Inadequate or even lack of accountability has the implication of making bureaucratic administration systems corrupt and omnipotent (Martin, 2006, p. 93).

Lack of accountability erodes the tenets of the responsibility that a government has towards its people.

Introducing the concept of responsibility to the discussions of accountability implies that people acting in the place of others have a legal obligation.

Besides, they have a moral responsibility to act in a manner that does not violate the trust bestowed to them and report to clients on how they have performed in the tasks dedicated to them (Rhodes, 1997). Interrelating responsibility and accountability this way attracts scholarly criticism.

For instance, Hughes (2003, p. 241) and Considine (2002, p. 22) maintain that responsibility is different from accountability in that, in the hierarchy of execution of responsibility at governmental and organizational levels, it acts in the opposite direction.

According to the author, this case happens where some subordinates are responsible for acts of other subordinates forming part of the work group.

It is unfair to hold one person responsible for an act of another person. For instance, a manger cannot bear criminal responsibility for undue act of an employee in his or her line of command. In this extent, responsibility does not define precisely the extents of liability, which should be held by specific persons in government. Hence, responsibility is different from accountability in that, when individuals are considered accountable, they would have some kind of punishment subscribed to them in case of unsuccessful performance (Behn 2001, p.4). In case of administrators in the government, one form of punishment would involve removal from office either through dismissal by the appointing authority or by being voted out in case of an elective office in democratic systems. In this sense, accountability in public affairs is associated with aspects of justice, reliability, and loyalty (Bovens 2005, p.182).

In public administration studies, accountability constitutes a large discipline. Scholars in the field have attempted to subdivide it into a number of facets. For example, Romzek (1998) divides it into four categories: legal accountability, hierarchical, professional, and political accountability (p.197).

A legal and hierarchical accountability reflects the traditional perspective of public administration approaches. Professional and political accountability fosters higher degrees of autonomy. Hence, they are integral to new public management theory.

According to Bovens (2005, p. 183), there are other types of accountability, which include administrative accountability, collective accountability, organizational accountability, individual accountability, and corporate accountability.

Behn (2001) classifies all these types of accountability into three typologies: performance, fairness, and finances accountability (p.6). Accountability for fairness makes rulers refrain from misusing their power unjustly to disadvantage some people.

In case of financial accountability, Bevir and Rhodes (2003) argue that government officials are entrusted with money belonging to taxpayers and that, if they fail to be accountable, they deserve a punishment (p.45).

Performance accountability is realized by setting targets with well-defined parameters for managers and leaders to attain.

The emphasis of accountability in public administration studies is paramount because accountability has significant functions within corporations and even in government.

The principle functions of accountability include fostering effectiveness, fairness, efficiency, integrity, and democratic governance (Arnull & Wincott, 2001, p. 18).

Integrity is the substrate for prevention of corruption coupled with other undue conducts of public officials. Effectiveness and efficiency enhance performance. When all the functions of the accountability are integrated, a legitimate and reliable system of governance is acquired (Ferlie, Hartley & Martin, 2003, p. 12).

Analysis: Progression of public accountability from traditional approaches in public governance to network governance

Traditional public administration and accountability

In the traditional public administration approaches, accountability is manifested in two main forms: bureaucratic and political accountability (Dunleavy & Hood, 1994, p. 9). In the bureaucratic accountability, citizens cannot directly hold civil servants accountable.

Hence, their accountability is only possible through voting in appropriate political systems that are capable of putting in place appropriate legal systems that can subject civil servants to trial in case they violate accountability codes of conduct.

In the context of traditional public administration, legal and hierarchical frameworks are deployed to enhance accountability.

In this sense, Romzek notes, “hierarchical relationships rely on supervisory and organizational directives including rules and standards operation procedures to which employees are answerable for their performance” (1998, p.197).

In this context, accountability is defined by various directives, which lay down the things that civil servants deserve to do and those that they should not do.

Enhancing accountability from a legal basis implies that certain externally set anticipations and or standards are established and met. The performance of the civil servants must conform to the established criteria.

Attempting to understand accountability from the contexts of the traditional approaches to public administration is quite easier. However, several problems emerge.

Fisher (2004, p. 510) exemplifies one of these challenges when he argues that, accountability in the context of traditional approaches to public administration is not multidimensional since the model holds politician accountable while neglecting administrators since they are not associated with policy formulation.

If anything goes wrong in the implementation of public policy, politicians should be held accountable since the administrators are only serving their bureaucratic role of implementation.

Mulgan (2003, p. 4) supports this line of argument by lamenting that cultural differences come into play at the juncture in which political leaders encounter the top administration arm in the hierarchical structure of public governance associated with traditional approaches in public policy making processes.

This challenge is akin to the focus of the traditional public administration on accountability based more on errors as opposed to achievements. Hence, the main attention is dedicated to the mistakes that would escape the scrutiny of the bureaucrats.

Acheberg and Baston (1997) illustrate accountability approaches from the context of traditional public administration through an experiment for two groups of people to give scholarships to various students (p.345).

The researcher was interested in the determination of the manner in which the groups allocated limited resources.

One group knew that its way of allocation of scholarships would be exposed to testing while the other group did not have such information.

The results on the experiment indicated that the group that knew its mechanism of allocation of resources would be tested for accountability allocated resources in an ineffective manner.

From this experiment, it can be inferred that perception of the need to be held accountable leads to low levels of efficiency thus reinforcing the argument that traditional public administration seeks to pursue accountability from the perfectives of legal and financial contexts as opposed to procedures and efficient utilization of resources.

Accountability in the new public management approaches

From the paradigms of new public management, citizens are viewed from the perspective of beings customers.

Looking at accountability from the dimension of the degree to which people making the decision on behalf of the citizens satisfy the citizens, new public management stands out as a model that is more effective in comparison to traditional public administration (Dunleavy & Hood, 1994, p. 12).

Adoption of this model implies that the responsibility to the citizens shifts from politicians to the managers. The aftermath of this step is the alteration of the relations that exist between elected persons and citizens in matters of allocation and management of public resources (Mulgan, 2003, p. 18).

Arguably, since new public management pursues the goal of improving relationships with various citizens (customers of the state), decision to maintain accountability is driven by the need to establish stable connections with people.

Comparatively, the traditional public administration approaches in enhancing accountability resulted in inefficiencies since it dwelled principally on seeking to control the manner in which bureaucrats spent resources as opposed to the outcomes realized from the utilization of resources.

Dunleavy and Hood (1994, p. 13) reinforce this argument by asserting that governments guided by traditional approaches of public administration hardly realized optimal results.

In the new public management, this challenge can be solved via making transfers of experiences to the private sector driven by the need to accord flexibility to mechanisms of public resource allocation in the effort to attain and satisfy the needs of citizens both optimally and maximally.

In this end, accountability is measured as the degree to which the needs of the citizens have been achieved as opposed to the effectiveness or efficiency of the procedures used to satisfy the needs of the clients.

This argument means that performance is an important parameter for measuring accountability under the new public management approaches.

New public management combines contracting with privatization to enhance the efficiency of delivery of public goods (Martin, 2006, p. 100). The focus is to shift functions of the public sector to the private sector so that, in the due course of seeking more profits, customer satisfaction is increased.

This means that the private sector would initiate steps to maintain its accountability since failure to do so would result in low profits.

Apart from shifting the accountability in the allocation of public resources to the private sector, new public management results in effective and efficient resources utilization in the attempt to yield optimal returns.

Bovens (2005, p. 182) commends such an approach by insisting that shifting the responsibility of allocation of public goods to the private sector provides the best mode of allocating and distributing public services.

Accountability in network governance

Over the last two decades, accountability with respect to network governance has undergone sophisticated changes grounded on the fundamentals of cooperation.

Network governance contrasts the other two models in that it predominantly dwells on the creation of public value coupled with putting in place the means of ensuring that the relationship between the government and the citizens is maintained at the closest levels.

The overall impact of network governance is the shifting of public accountability to horizontal accountability (Behn, 2001, p. 6). Bevir and Trentmann (2007) explain that this shift is fuelled by the need to enhance direct accountability to various customers (citizens), agencies, media, and even members of the civil society (p.78).

This shift is perhaps vital by considering the rapid creation of various citizen charters, citizen panels and myriads of focus groups all aimed at enhancing public accountability in the recent past in various nations.

In particular, in the UK, a citizen panel comprised 6000 people to represent all citizens was formed and mandated to consult citizens on matters of the quality of the services delivered to them by the public sector (Curtin, 2004, p. 104: Bergman & Damgaard, 2000, p. 15).

Many other measures are also being adopted by different nations to compel the governments to be accountable to the citizens. They include publication of inspection reports, benchmarking reports, and assessment reports among other things over the internet. All attempts are aimed at encouraging horizontal accountability.

The discussion above brings into the lime light a striking difference between the three topologies of public governance in enhancing public accountability.

Under the traditional public administration, governments are neither principally interested nor focused on the outputs of the processes of allocation and distribution of public goods. Rather, more emphasis is paid on curtailing redundant mistakes.

In case of new public management, concerns of accountability are market-driven (Kettle, 1998, p. 81).

For network governance, rational matching of private with public sectors coupled with advocating for cooperation for the two sectors is the central concern believed to enhance the effectiveness and efficacy in achievements of results.

Important to note is that network governance also compares with the other two approaches of accountability in that, under traditional public governance and new public management, civil servants are charged with the noble responsibility of ensuring that partnerships are created to foster cooperation between private and public sector.

In such cases, administrators have narrow roles in enhancing interaction between various stakeholders who are vital in ensuring accountability.

In the network governance era, transparency coupled with frankness and openness in the process of decision-making is influenced by interaction and cooperation of various stakeholders or contributors in the sphere of public accountability.

Conclusion

In public administration studies, accountability is considered as an element that helps to foster openness and trustworthiness coupled with transparency in both formulation and implementation of public policies. Public policies are formulated to enhance the allocation and distribution of public goods and services.

Members of the Public hold the government accountable for the delivery of public goods and services.

Driven by this concern, the paper focused on conducting an analysis on the changes and differences in approaches of public accountability from three dimensions: traditional public administration approaches to accountability, new public management, and network governance.

It was argued in the paper that accountability is pivotal in societies. It is a determinant of the existing relationship between citizens and the government.

Based on this argument, the paper maintained that democratic governance could not prevail in an environment dominated by administration systems that are not accountable for their actions.

The study demonstrated the significance of public accountability with respect to types coupled with functions of various forms of accountability. From traditional public administration through new public management to the network governance, several changes have taken place with respect to accountability.

New public management is considered an optimal mechanism of allocation and distribution of public goods and services compared to the traditional public administration. In the due process, public accountability is incredibly improved.

Under the paradigms of new public management, the relationship between bureaucrat and customers (citizens) is also improved. A shift in the measurement of accountability changes from being based on resources to the performance in terms of results.

With the adoption of network governance, which concerns itself with the creation of public value, cooperation of private and public sector is enhanced thus giving rise to even more enhanced accountability in allocation and distribution of the scarcest public resources.

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