Redundant Accountability: The Joint Impact of Horizontal and Vertical Accountability on Autonomous Agencies

Abstract

INTRODUCTION Since the 1990s, many executive and regulatory agencies in numerous OECD-countries have been (partially) separated from central government departments (Pollitt and Bouckaert 2004; Rhodes 1994; Flinders 2001). The resulting autonomous agencies have been coined quango's (Van Thiel 2000; Deacon and Monk 2001), non-majoritarian institutions (Thatcher and Stone Sweet 2002) or simply 'the unelected' (Vibert 2007). The qualifications all signify that the autonomous agencies are exempted from traditional democratic lines of accountability as ministerial responsibility was restricted (Van Thiel 2000: 222; Flinders 2001). In response, new forms of accountability have been introduced, such as performance audit and reporting, client panels, charters and protocols, scorecards and benchmarks, audits, professional evaluations, ombudsmen and boards of commissioners (see Demmke e.a. 2006 for an EU-wide overview). Many of these mechanisms are horizontal forms of where agencies report to others than their hierarchical principals, such as clients, partners, professional peers or independent boards (Day and Klein 1987: 28; Sinclair 1995: 223; Scott 2000: 42; Verschuere et al. 2006; Schillemans 2008). They contrast with traditional forms of where a subordinate usually reports to a superior (vertical accountability, see Mulgan 2003; Bovens 2007). The introduction of horizontal accountability does not mean that the vertical line of accountability towards parent-departments disappears altogether. As a result, autonomous agencies operate in a seemingly redundant accountability regime. Redundancy is often considered as problematic and costly but may also have significant benefits in complex systems, such as greater reliability and the capacity to incorporate different values (Landau 1969; Bendor 1985; Scott 2000). This paper analyses the multiple accountability regimes of autonomous executive agencies in the Netherlands. The central question is: does the addition of horizontal mechanisms lead to a profitable, redundant accountability regime? In order to answer this question, two successive research questions will be posed. 1) Is the accountability regime in practice redundant in the sense that agencies have to account for the same aspects of their behaviour towards vertical and horizontal accountability forums? 2) If found to be the case, does redundant accountability then have the advantages identified in the redundancy-literature? The research questions are answered on the basis of qualitative research on two horizontal accountability mechanisms: professional evaluations and boards of commissioners. The research focused on six professional evaluations and six boards of commissioners at nine of the largest Dutch executive agencies. The paper will first discuss the concept of (horizontal) accountability. The paper then proceeds to discuss the potential advantages of redundancy for accountability. After the section on research design and methods, the paper will asses to what extent the different accountability processes are redundant and to what extent the potential advantages of redundancy could be found in these cases. In the final section the findings are put into perspective. ACCOUNTABILITY: VERTICAL AND HORIZONTAL Accountability is a contested concept that, even though it is widely used in public administration, has failed to reach an unequivocal meaning (Romzek and Dubnick 1998; Mulgan 2003; Koppell 2005; Bovens 2010). 'Accountability' is used as a synonym for many loosely defined political desiderata, such as transparency, equity, democracy, efficiency, responsiveness, responsibility, and integrity (Mulgan 2000: 555; Behn 2001, 3-6; Dubnick 2003). Much of the academic literature on accountability is rather disconnected, and many authors set out to produce their own specific definitions of accountability or mainly use the term as a stepping stone for a normative assessment of some policy area. …

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