Accountability and Institutional Design: Some Thoughts on the Grammar of Governance
Accountability and Institutional Design: Some Thoughts on the Grammar of Governance
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问责与制度设计：关于治理语法的一些思考
DOI：
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发表时间：
2006
期刊：
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通讯作者：
J. Mashaw
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
J. Mashaw
问责制是一个变化多端的概念，是当代多种焦虑的代名词。公众对官僚、公司、超国家机构和私有化政府服务的不负责任的担忧--仅举几个目标--无处不在。问责肯定是个问题。但具体是什么样的问题呢？什么样的问责结构足以向公众保证，众多有权势的行为者的行为受到有效的监督和控制。本文首先从解释问责制开始，以证明问责制的讨论是关于六个相关问题的答案的讨论，这些问题的答案构成了我所说的问责制的基本组成部分。这些问题在不同的背景下具有多重含义，但我的主张是，它们是一组必须解决的问题，以使任何关于问责制有效性的主张有意义。然后，我提出了问责制度的部分分类。这一分类工作为制度设计者（或制度批评者）在处理问责制问题时提供了一个基本的选择地图。它还开始说明为什么体制设计问题的基础是在相互竞争、相互重叠和不可避免地不能令人满意的问责制度之间作出的一系列选择。第三部分说明了问责制的概念框架-一种处理问责制问题的治理语法-如何能够在日益重要和争议日益广泛的当代竞技场-外包治理中加以运用。本节着眼于责任的关注，外包产生，并设置在一个长期的辩论框架内的政府，市场和民间社会在追求集体项目的相对作用的焦虑。这为审计问责制账簿的工作奠定了基础-这表明如何在一个具体的外包政府系统内系统地分析问责制问题。本审计说明了分类法如何帮助揭示在高度外包的系统中可能出现的复杂的责任问题，沿着一些困难和特定设计选择的意外责任后果。最后，结论部分谈到了一个隐藏在整个讨论表面之下的问题：我们应该如何评估特定问责安排的可接受性？这里的重点并不是说，如果我们采取规范性立场，我们总是可以通过巧妙的制度设计来解决我们的问责问题。相反，它说明，一旦我们合理地直接分析或语法问责，并理解不同形式的问责的基本目的，我们就可以更清楚地看到许多问责争议真正意味着什么。因为，从根本上说，关于问责制的争论主要是关于特定机构应该做什么的争论，而不是关于它们在做这件事时有多负责任的争论。
Accountability is a protean concept, a placeholder for multiple contemporary anxieties. Public concern about the unaccountability of bureaucrats, corporations, supranational institutions and privatized governmental services - to name but a few targets - is ubiquitous. Accountability is surely a problem. But exactly what sort of problem? And what accountability structures would suffice to assure the public that the behavior of a multitude of powerful actors is subject to effective oversight and control. This essay begins by unpacking accountability to demonstrate that accountability talk is at base talk about the answer to six linked questions whose answers form the basic building blocks of what I will refer to as accountability regimes. These questions take on multiple meanings in diverse contexts, but my claim is that they are a set of questions that must be addressed to make sense of any claim about the efficacy of accountability. I then present a partial taxonomy of accountability regimes. This taxonomic exercise provides a basic map of the choices available to institutional designers (or institutional critics) when addressing accountability questions. It also begins to illustrate why institutional design issues are at base a set of choices among competing, overlapping and inevitably unsatisfactory, accountability regimes. Part III, illustrates the way this conceptual framework of accountability, a sort of grammar of governance for addressing accountability issues, can be deployed in a contemporary arena of increasing importance and widespread dispute: contracted out governance. This section looks at the accountability concerns that contracting out generates and sets those anxieties within a framework of long-standing debates about the relative roles of government, the market, and civil society in pursuing collective projects. This sets the stage for an exercise in auditing the accountability books - a demonstration of how accountability issues might be analyzed systematically within the context of a specific, contracted out governmental system. This audit illustrates how the taxonomy helps reveal the complex of accountability issues that can arise in a highly contracted out system, along with some of the difficulties and unanticipated accountability consequences of particular design choices. Finally, the Conclusion addresses an issue that lurks beneath the surface of the whole discussion: How should we assess the acceptability of particular accountability arrangements? The point here is not to suggest that, if we get the normative stance, right we can always solve our accountability problems through clever institutional design. It illustrates instead that once we get the analytics or grammar of accountability reasonably straight, and understand the basic purposes of different forms of accountability, we can then see more clearly what many accountability disputes really entail. For, at base, much of the dispute about accountability is a dispute about what particular institutions are meant to do, not how accountable they are in the doing of it.