Happily unaccountable? Perceptions of accountability by public managers

Abstract

This paper opens up the black box of agencies’ accountability relationships and zooms in on their top managers and the perceptions of accountability thereof. So far, very few studies have examined how agency managers perceive and experience attempts to control the public sector organizations that they manage. The paper seeks to address this gap through a focus on “felt” accountability, denoting (1) a manager’s (more or less high) expectation to have to explain substantive decisions to a parent department perceived, (2) to have (more or less) the expertise, and (3) to be (more or less) in a legitimate position to assess those decisions. We empirically explore in two steps (using quantitative and qualitative data) agencies’ felt accountability to the parent department in Switzerland, which presents a puzzling case of relatively low accountability according to a survey of agency managers in seven established democracies (Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom). Our findings point to the differences between regulatory and non-regulatory agencies and show that the former’s perception of being weakly accountable largely stems from the passive attitude of the parent ministry as official accountability forum. Agency managers interpret this attitude as a manifestation of respect for the agencies’ independence, but also as a consequence of the forum’s lack of time and expertise. In some cases, the parent ministry is not even considered to be the relevant accountability forum, suggesting that this accountability relationship is just one facet of the accountability regime in which agencies are embedded.