Walking a Tightrope? The Changing Role of State Audit in Accountability Regimes in Europe

Abstract

Public money is big business, being spent mostly in the public sector, but increasingly through private and voluntary bodies. It is widely recognized that there are differences between public and private money and that this affects accountability ( Mulgan, 2000 , 2002 ). A government review in the United Kingdom asked why public money “should be subject to any accountabilities over and above those that might apply to private money,” concluding it was due to the element of compulsion often involved in raising it; that it could only be used for the purposes intended and authorized; that there were greater expectations about its use by those entrusted with it; and that greater accountability was a proxy for the absence of competitive pressures in much of the public sector ( Sharman, 2001 ).

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