Alan Hudson recently tweeted a question: Are accountability and transparency always relevant concepts in the good governance discussion (find him as alanhudson1 on twitter, and at his blog, http://www.alanhudson.info/ and the ONE blog http://www.one.org/international/blog/author/alan-hudson/).
The question is interesting. It is an important effort to go beyond poorly considered ideas about governance that do not travel well and are not always relevant. It is an effort to say "do we know if specific aspects of governance hold in most contexts?" I will re-phrase the question with some of my own:
- What do we mean by accountability?
- What do we mean by transparency?
- Are they means towards better governance?
- If so, how do we think they facilitate better governance? Do we think they could ever compromise governance?
- Or are they ends of governance reforms themselves?
Let me give my thoughts on both concepts.
On transparency
Alan yesterday tweeted about an interesting post by my good friend Joel Turkewitz at the World Bank (http://blogs.worldbank.org/governance/node/895). It helps to think through some of these questions I raise above.
Joel notes that if you simply value transparency because it seems to improve accountability and facilitate lower corruption, evidence suggests it does not achieve these ends alone. He says, however, that transparency is an important means to various other ends. This yields three reasons he says we should care about transparency: 1. Transparency potentially changes the way government operates. 2. Transparency potentially changes the relationship between people and government officials. 3. Transparency enables groups that otherwise would not be able to participate, to participate in governance.
I like the ideas Joel is exploring. Let's think about them:
- First, transparency is a means and not an end--a tool that could help achieve important results.
- Second, transparency works by changing relational dynamics between agents (in the workplace of governments, the interaction of governments and citizens, and amongst citizen groups themselves, for example).
- Third, transparency may not be always be the right means--tool--and may not always have the desired effects (see Joel's use of the word 'potentially').
Given such thinking, I see transparency fitting into the governance discussion naturally and easily. Governance, in my approach, is all about the authority relationships between agents that facilitate getting things done (see earlier posts). Transparency is a means that can sometimes be used to improve these authorizing frameworks and help improve outcomes. It is 'potentially' a useful tool in such.
But note that it should not always or automatically be considered a good fit or useful tool. One can think of many cases where transparency does not improve governance and lead to better results; where opaqueness is the better tool. The obvious examples are intelligence and defense operations, but think also of the debate about transparency of patient records in the US health care industry (which many don't want released because patients rights may be violated), and all the professors out there know well that students do not always value transparency in grades (at least not when it comes to others seeing their grades).
To know when and how transparency matters as a tool of governance, one should start by asking who is engaged in the governance situation, what results are hoped for, and if there are transparency problems. So, transparency matters but not in a standardized manner and not all the time.
My thoughts on accountability
I feel similarly about accountability, but have some problems with the concept. The main problem is simply that I don't think we all understand the concept in the same way. Next time you have a room of experts together, ask them to write down what they understand by 'accountability' and an example of accountability in action. I guarantee multiple answers, laden with values and norms, providing fodder for difficult debate.
Beyond this, I think the concept fits into a governance discussion in the same way as 'transparency'. As with governance, accountability is about relationships. So the question is: who is meant to be accountable to whom? As with governance, accountability is also about results. So the question is: what is agent x accountable to agent y for?
Now we are talking about a concept that matters. But note a few problems. First, all agents have multiple accountabilities--to different agents and for different things. This is particularly true for govenment officials--whether politicians or bureaucrats. It is also true for all of us working on the outside of developing countries, accountable to ourselves as individuals, to the donor agency that funds a particular job, the officials we work with, the citizens of the country affected by our work, our families (for the dollars we bring home) etc.
When we speak of 'Improved accountability', what is it we are talking about? My concern is that accountability and governance come together in a normative discussion and not a real one, where 'accountability' is a generic concept that we should simply pursue. In fact, it is complex and contextual relational idea that needs to be unpacked for every situation. My bigger concern is that when we talk about developing countries being accountable we mean 'they do what we say'. We need to remember that accounatbility relationships are up, down and sideways for all of us and that the relationship of donors and governments is in fact one of the biggest challenges to achieving 'accounable' governments and 'good governance' in developing countries.
Transparency, accountability and governance
Given the above, my feeling is that transparency and accountability are central concepts in the discussion of governance but need to be contextualized, unpacked and treated with caution. I don't understand people who speak generally about thes concepts.
What does it mean to 'Improve budgetary transparency to improve accountability'? We need to be more specific, because any read of Wildavsky will tell us that accountability is a multi-dimensional construct in the world of public budgeting, and any read of the literature on fiscal rules will tell us that greater transparency often leads to more games and reduced accountability of bureaucrats and politicians to citizens.
Accountability and transparency matter in specific ways and specific contexts. Better information on education fund flows, provided to citizens, may help improve the accountability of teachers and principals to citizens and ultimately facilitate better school governance for instance. In all cases, governance, transparency and accountability are about agents engaging with agents and any intervention needs to think through who engages with whom, for what, how, when, why. These are the generic questions.
FIFA: The beautiful game in not so beautiful hands
Given yesterday's resignation by a FIFA official, and my great love for the beautiful game, let me start everyone thinking about the FIFA governance puzzle, and particularly about what a transparency-enhancing approach may look like to get FIFA more accountable and better governed.
Who are these officials meant to be accountable for, for what, when, and why? I fear that calls for more transparency and accountability are useless until we are clear about the answers. If they are a politically elected cabinet, who is the electorate and how can transparency help that relationship? If they see themselves as the braintrust of a clandestine syndicate, how could transparency help?
Interesting post, but that wasn't quite the question I posed. I was trying to come up with a way of explaining that while the nature of effective governance will vary depending on the context, transparency and accountability are always important.
I think you are right to question that assumption Matt, but that is the question I posed. And the phrase I came up with was that:
There is no single recipe for effective governance, but whatever recipe a country chooses, transparency and accountability are essential ingredients (for sustainable country-owned development).
To respond to your blog specifically:
1) Yes, discussions about T & A are much much better/more useful when focused on particular issues/domains.
2) Yes, the questions about T and A for what, from whom, to whom, where, how etc. always need asking.
3) I need to think some more about Joel's post. His latter 2 points seemed to be basically things that are steps towards accountability. So, saying that transparency matters for those reasons even if it doesn't lead to acc and effectiveness, seemed a bit odd. But I may have misunderstood.
Posted by: Alan Hudson | 06/21/2011 at 08:02 AM
Nice response, Alan, and thanks for connecting the blog more accurately to your thoughts. I think we are probably more on the same page than off it. I agree that Transparency and Accountability are key ingredients in governance and thus hope we can find ways to think more contextually and deeply about both concepts. I know this is what ONE is doing and a range of other organizations. Very exciting prospects in this line of work.
Posted by: Matt Andrews | 06/21/2011 at 08:32 AM