Informal Accountability, Distrust, and Speaking Out

Accountability did not operate solely through formal audits, institutions or legal processes; informal and public forms of accountability were also particularly important, not least as a pressure on Parliament, the East India Company and other institutions (often themselves seen as corrupt), to increase their oversight of officers. Such public accountability could take many forms but the chapter focuses on people (often officials themselves) who made public revelations when they felt that formal accountability mechanisms had failed. These men might now be called ‘whistle-blowers’ but in the pre-modern period their behaviour struggled to achieve legitimacy. The chapter surveys the variety of their motives and shows how they fought to expose and remedy corruption, often using print to do so, before sketching the negative ways in which their institutions reacted to their complaints and publicity.

Collaborative Governance and Unemployment in New Zealand: Two Case Studies

<b>Long-term unemployment is a significant problem for Governments and communities. It demands innovative and agile policy responses, including those that involve community partners. However, research has shown that for the New Zealand Government to achieve collaboration, deep change in institutional arrangements is required. This thesis investigates collaborative governance as an alternative paradigm, drawing on the Community Employment Group and Mayors Taskforce for Jobs initiatives as case studies. It explores the leadership styles and behaviours, participatory processes and accountability mechanisms that enabled ongoing and iterative problem solving with communities, to address long-term unemployment.</b><br>Analysis of the case studies found that: the leaders wrote their own rulebooks, and as such, accountability and participatory mechanisms were inextricably intertwined with the personality, skills, competencies and preferences of the leader; the transparency of accountability arrangements were critical to the survival of the initiatives, and the informal mechanisms were at least as important as formal mechanisms; and that participation can be a much looser arrangement than that suggested in the collaborative governance literature. These cases showed that there is little room for complacency in collaborative governance. Tenacious and visionary leadership, formal and informal accountability mechanisms that give legitimacy to the initiative and frequent, genuine and open communication by all parties combine as key factors to sustain ongoing and iterative problem solving to address long-term unemployment.

Collaborative Governance and Unemployment in New Zealand: Two Case Studies

<p><b>Long-term unemployment is a significant problem for Governments and communities. It demands innovative and agile policy responses, including those that involve community partners. However, research has shown that for the New Zealand Government to achieve collaboration, deep change in institutional arrangements is required. This thesis investigates collaborative governance as an alternative paradigm, drawing on the Community Employment Group and Mayors Taskforce for Jobs initiatives as case studies. It explores the leadership styles and behaviours, participatory processes and accountability mechanisms that enabled ongoing and iterative community solving to address long-term unemployment. </b></p><p>Analysis of the case studies found that: the leaders wrote their own rulebooks, and as such, accountability and participatory mechanisms were inextricably intertwined with the personality, skills, competencies and preferences of the leader; the transparency of accountability arrangements were critical to the survival of the initiatives, and the informal mechanisms were at least as important as formal mechanisms; and that participation can be a much looser arrangement than that suggested in the collaborative governance literature. These cases showed that there is little room for complacency in collaborative governance. Tenacious and visionary leadership, formal and informal accountability mechanisms that give legitimacy to the initiative and frequent, genuine and open communication by all parties combine as key factors to sustain ongoing and iterative problem solving to address long-term unemployment. </p>

Collaborative Governance and Unemployment in New Zealand: Two Case Studies

<p><b>Long-term unemployment is a significant problem for Governments and communities. It demands innovative and agile policy responses, including those that involve community partners. However, research has shown that for the New Zealand Government to achieve collaboration, deep change in institutional arrangements is required. This thesis investigates collaborative governance as an alternative paradigm, drawing on the Community Employment Group and Mayors Taskforce for Jobs initiatives as case studies. It explores the leadership styles and behaviours, participatory processes and accountability mechanisms that enabled ongoing and iterative community solving to address long-term unemployment. </b></p><p>Analysis of the case studies found that: the leaders wrote their own rulebooks, and as such, accountability and participatory mechanisms were inextricably intertwined with the personality, skills, competencies and preferences of the leader; the transparency of accountability arrangements were critical to the survival of the initiatives, and the informal mechanisms were at least as important as formal mechanisms; and that participation can be a much looser arrangement than that suggested in the collaborative governance literature. These cases showed that there is little room for complacency in collaborative governance. Tenacious and visionary leadership, formal and informal accountability mechanisms that give legitimacy to the initiative and frequent, genuine and open communication by all parties combine as key factors to sustain ongoing and iterative problem solving to address long-term unemployment. </p>

Accountability and Blame Avoidance After Crises

The post-crisis accountability process is a purification ritual that serves to channel public emotions and enables re-equilibration after a severe disturbance of the sociopolitical order. Crisis accountability literature can be reviewed in terms of forums, actors, and consequences. This setup allows a systematic discussion of how crises impact: the accountability process in influencing its setting (the forum); the strategies of accountees and their opponents (actors); and the resulting outcomes in terms of reputation damage, sanctions, and restoration (consequences). There is a clear distinction between formal and informal accountability forums, with the media being almost exclusively informal, and judicial forums, accident investigators, and political inquiries having formal authority over accountability assessments. Yet, through the presence of formal authorities in media reporting, and because media frames influence the work of formal authorities, the different forums intensively interact in accountability processes. Looking at accountability strategies reveals that the number of actors involved in blame games is likely rising because of increasingly networked crisis responses, and the role of actors has become more important and personal in the crisis aftermath and accountability process. The consequences and success of individual actors in influencing the accountability outcomes is shaped by both institutional settings and individual skills and strategies. A current political power position that exceeds prior mistakes is an effective shield, and denial is the least effective though most commonly used strategy. Accountability processes remain a balancing act between rebuttal and repair. Yet after major crisis, renewal is possible, and post-crisis accountability can play a crucial role therein.

The Curbing of Corruption by Formal and Informal Accountability at the Indonesian Local Governments

According to the compilation of Corruption Perception Index (CPI) by Transparency International Indonesia on 2006, 2008 and 2010, 85 percent of the Indonesia local governments got a score less than 5 with meaning highly corrupt. However, there are exceptions such as Yogyakarta City. Yogyakarta is one of the areas with relatively low levels of corruption in its local governments in 2006 (5.59), 2008 (6.33), and 2010 (5.81). So, what does Yogyakarta do differently? One of the reasons for the differences in corruption level might be that, where it is widely supposed that corruption is negatively related to accountability, increased accountability is mostly implemented by formal mechanism. Special for Yogyakarta is that it, next to such formal ways of accountability, makes extensive use of informal ways to improve accountability. As such, the success of Yogyakarta as one of the Indonesian regions with the lowest levels of corruption is interesting to study in that it might provide additional insight in existing theoretical perspectives on accountability.

Relational Mechanisms in Complex Contracting: Factors Associated with Private Managers’ Satisfaction with and Commitment to the Contract Relationship

The complexity of human service delivery means that contracts are often incomplete or contingent. When contracted services or products are complex, relational contracting can function as a critical informal accountability mechanism. This study introduces and tests a conceptual framework of relational processes and organizational factors hypothesized to inform private human service contract outcomes. Data from a 2015 survey of private nonprofit and for-profit human service organizations in five counties are used to examine factors associated with two proximal indicators of success in human service contracting: commitment to and satisfaction with the contract relationship. Findings provide support for our conceptual framework, highlight the multidimensional nature of trust and commitment, and identify key differences in the relational processes associated with commitment and satisfaction to the contract relationship. Communication quality, trust, and flexibility were associated with satisfaction, whereas interdependence, flexibility, and asset specificity were associated with longer-term commitment to the contract relationship. For-profit ownership was associated with lower commitment and satisfaction. Implications for research and practice are discussed.