Spontaneous Accountability

Source: (2006) In Michael W. Dowdle, Ed., Public Accountability, Designs, Dilemmas and Experiences. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 174-191.

“Contemporary ideas about governance are dominated by a loss of faith in both hierarchical modes of control and state-centric conceptions of governing. This tendency has caused both scholars and public-policymakers to search for evidence that other modes and loci of control are or might be effective in supplementing or replacing hierarchy and the state….This chapter extends the discussion beyond the modalities of control by focusing on the question of how narratives can be developed which might give some process-based legitimacy to those regimes which displace state and hierarchy at the centre of accounts of contemporary governance. In particular, it examines how regimes of accountability emerge more or less spontaneously and attach themselves to different regimes of control. My use of the term “spontaneous” here implies the emergency of accountability regimes in a manner which is neither intended (or wholly intended) nor directed toward particular ends. This is not to suggest that the actors involved in at least some accountability structures lack intention or views on ends, but rather that accountability regimes, overall, are complex and not liable to be the product of intended actions (and therefore not directed toward particular ends).” (excerpt)