Accountable Government through Collaborative Governance?

Eva Sørensen and Jacob Torfing
Additional contact information
Eva Sørensen: Department of Social Sciences, NORD University, 8049 Nordland, Norway
Jacob Torfing: Department of Social Sciences, NORD University, 8049 Nordland, Norway

Administrative Sciences, 2021, vol. 11, issue 4, 1-20

Abstract: Governance researchers have repeatedly discussed how to make public governance more accountable given the relatively ‘thin’ accountability of representative government. Recent decades have seen the growth of new, compensatory forms of accountability. However, these measures do not seem have satisfied the demands for strengthening public sector accountability. Drawing on the concept of social accountability, this article challenges common wisdom in arguing that collaborative governance may enhance public governance accountability, although it also raises new accountability problems that must be tackled. The article develops a heuristic framework for empirical studies of accountability, which improves the impact of collaborative forms of governance.

Keywords: representative democracy; public accountability; social accountability; collaborative governance; metagovernance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L M M0 M1 M10 M11 M12 M14 M15 M16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3387/11/4/127/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3387/11/4/127/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jadmsc:v:11:y:2021:i:4:p:127-:d:674420

Access Statistics for this article

Administrative Sciences is currently edited by Ms. Nancy Ma

More articles in Administrative Sciences from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().