Measuring Accountability: Theory and Practice
What is public accountability and how can we measure it? And how can we measure the performance of institutions that have been established to ensure public accountability?
Hovedinnhold
The closing session of an international workshop arranged jointly by UiB and CMI will be open to the public. Four experts will discuss answers to these questions from theoretical and practical perspectives.
Mark Bovens, editor of the Oxford Handbook on Public Accountability (2014), distinguishes between accountability as a virtue and as a mechanism. He will discuss approaches to assess whether there is accountability of either kind at all and how to compare the level of accountability between organizations and regimes and how to evaluate changes over time.
A speciailised type of accountability organization are anti-corruption agencies. Since the mid-1990s, international organizations have been supporting the creation of Anti-corruption Authorities (ACAs) to address the problem of corruption, leading to a mushrooming of these agencies worldwide. A significant challenge has been how to accurately measure their performance and in turn their impact. Although the majority of ACAs has established a basic monitoring and evaluation system, identifying indicators that capture not only their outputs, but also their impact has proved difficult. Elin Bergman, Governance Specialist at the World Bank’s Governance Global Practice, will present first findings from data collected on 65 anti-corruption authorities (ACAs) since 2010, including indicators currently in used to track outputs, outcomes, impact and, indicators of their efficiency.
The Panel
Mark Bovens is Professor of Public Administration at the Utrecht University School of Governance and member of the Dutch Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR) in The Hague. His present research interests include accountability and governance, citizenship and democracy, and trust in government. He recently published The Oxford Handbook of Public Accountability, (Mark Bovens, Robert E Goodin, Thomas Schillemans, eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press 2014.
Elin Bergman is a Governance Specialist at the World Bank’s Governance Global Practice, where she focuses on anticorruption and accountability institutions, as well as on local governance and sub-national finance. Before joining the World Bank she worked as an Economist for one of Scandinavia’s leading Economic Consultancy Firms, where she helped public sector clients evaluate and devise new policy and regulation in a wide range of areas. She holds a M.Sc. in Economics from Lund University (Sweden).
Discussant, Jesper Johnsøn specialises in how to design, implement, and evaluate governance and anti-corruption reforms in developing countries. As Senior Advisor at the U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre, he conducts research, provides policy advice, and delivers training for U4 partners and broader audiences. He holds a PhD and M.Phil in Development Studies from the University of Cambridge, and an MA and BA in Political Science from the University of Copenhagen.
Moderator, Steinar Askvik, is Professor at the Department of Administration and Organization Theory, University of Bergen.