The Point of Making People and Organizations More Accountable - Essay Example

The point of making people and organizations more accountable Accountability appears like it is a matter of restricting choices that officials of an institution can make without running the risk of sanctions. (Lebeck, 2004). The concept of accountability describes the rights and responsibilities existing between people and the institutions affecting their lives; this includes governments, civil society and market actors (Newell & Wheeler, 2006b). The point of making people and organizations more accountable, is therefore, expected. The reasons are the concern of this paper, and they are slowly introduced as the discussion unfolds. Transparency as well as promises and performance are inherently related to accountability (Newell & Wheeler, 2006b). This is because there are the stakeholders who need current information on the status of their concerns. For example, in an international session that looked at accountability across all sectors involved in HIV, including community, government and UN, a reporter reported that – The movement is now fragmented. There are some new voices but it’s not representative of everyone. And ever since treatment became accessible, the sense of urgency is lost. Many activists who were fighting for their lives have now gone on medication and gone back to having full time jobs (Narayanan, 2006). One strong point of making people and organizations more accountable is that people’s ability to realise their rights to resources have increased (Newell &Wheeler, 2006b). Accordingly more responsive institutions enable people to gain access to resources, equipping them with legal frameworks, citizen engagements, understanding of accountability, and state-market relations. Citizens are taught a range of informal and formal strategies to demand accountability, too. Another reason in making people and organizations more accountable is to fight the perception that the organization is illegitimate. Therefore, organizations, especially those international in scope, need to increase transparency, improve accountability, and think harder about norms for global governance (Nye, 2001). By increasing visibility, criticism may be minified (Lloyd & de Las Casas, 2005). It cannot also be discounted that some organizations are speaking up on behalf of marginalized communities and have facilitated the participation of these communities in such matters as HIV/AIDS response (Code of Good Practice, 2004). There are questions then about the quality and accountability of programmes being delivered by some organizations. NGOs are said to have lacked resources, technical skills or experience, and this has implications for the quality of programming, monitoring and evaluation of these programmes (Code of Good Practice, 2004). The truth is that not everyone benefits equally from programmes so that attention has to be given to issues of intra-community accountability, adequate channels of representation, and new mechanisms for inclusion and participation (Newell & Wheeler, 2006b). This sense of community as a reason for accountability was also emphasized by Johnsson (1996). Another is that while markets have bonded people together, environmental, social, and political interdependence have also increased (Nye, 2001). There is concern that humanitarian agencies have no accepted body of professional standards to guide their work, especially when new ones are coming into the humanitarian sector. A truism is that whether experienced or newly-created, humanitarian assistance agencies could make mistakes, be misguided or sometimes misuse the trust placed in them (Borton, 1994). Moreover, any allocation of resources needs guidance (Code of Good Practice, 2004). There is also the need for donors to be more accountable to those they aim to support and those they press to reform (Newell & Wheeler, 2006b). History is replete with peoples’ fight from developing countries with country borrowings with the World Bank and IMF. Indeed, rational behaviour (Olson et al, 1998) is one point of making people and organizations more accountable. Alarming as it may be, some governments are perceived conspiring with organizations against people’s interests so that there needs to be some accounting. The case of community based-organizations in Niger Delta exemplify this case – Youth groups and women’s organisations have formed in reaction to perceived collusion between government and the oil companies operating in the Niger Delta, leading to conflicts over oil. These groups represent communities in the Niger Delta who are not being heard through formal channels, and they often clash with powerful official institutions, such as local chiefs and elected officials. (Newell & Wheeler, 2006b) In all of these, however, the study of literature points to the fact that in the public sector the concept of accountability means different things. This is on account of variations in language practices, emerging from national political culture of each nation and rhetoric of the reforms (Olson, Guthrie & Humphrey, 1998). Further, at different times, there were different types of accountability perceptions. For example, in Britain and Australia, the commercial (market oriented) and the managerial (results oriented) models of accountability respectively dominated the definition (Guthrie and Parker, 1998), while in countries such as France, the emphasis was on bureaucratic control at a central level, and the management control on local levels (Hagland, 1998). In Japan and Germany, compliance with the central budget is the main factor behind the various definitions of accountability (Kokubo et al. 1998, Luder, 1998). In practice, accountability can take a number of different forms, depending on the institution in question. In general, however, relationships of accountability have two important components: answerability and enforceability (Newell & Wheeler, 2006b). Answerability is said to be the right to get a response and the obligation to provide one; and, enforceability is the capacity to ensure that an action is taken, and that there is access to mechanisms for damages when accountability fails. The benefits of working accountability are that citizens are able to make demands on powerful institutions, and ensure that those demands are met (Newell & Wheeler, 2006b). The concept of public accountability is said to be fundamental to the understanding of all other types of accountability. However, in some literature, the definition of public accountability has been cut back and considered synonymous with political accountability (Batley and Stoker, 1991). In fact, public accountability is also used to denote administrative accountability. It appears that assumptions of how public accountability is to be defined may vary in accordance with the country concerned. In research reports by Glynn (1977), and Walsh (1995), the managerial role of accountability is making a strong claim to represent public accountability. In contrast, in a report presented by Luder (1998), public accountability is politically defined in terms of the three levels of government, consisting of federal, state, and local. Luder has further contended that the key language of accountability is budget. Accordingly, by legal principles, the formal compliance between budget and expenditures is ensured, according to Luder. Accountability, however, is not just about financial accountancy (Newell & Wheeler, 2006a). Generally speaking, in the research reports of Olsen et al (1998), there is an indication that depending on the political and administrative characteristics of governments, national traditions, and political culture, the concepts of public accountability must carry the risk of being too narrow or too broad. A different tack is taken by the Swedes who focus on the ideals that characterize public accountability. These are democratic involvement, local democratic movements, and politically-determined bureaucratic structure. Generally, public accountability is often understood as a kind of vocal expression that interrelate the communities with the local politicians. According to Olson, et al. (1998), public accountability is to be understood by three orientations: the bureaucratic or legal, the administrative, and the political. In Johnsson’s (1988) view, the bureaucratic or legal accountability is structured by interpretation of Municipal law and principles of local budgeting. Administrative accountability is established through the adoption of professionally-defined organizations, and skill in service professions, whereas, political accountability is maintained by the administration of trust, and consideration of information drawn from the context of each particular local government (Johnsson, 1996). This is the same definition given earlier by Newell & Wheeler (2006a) with particular emphasis on location or country. From the perspective of development, as accountability shapes people’s ability to realise their rights to resources, services and institutions, they need responsive institutions to help them. Such institutions have an obligation to provide an account of their actions (or inaction), and also the means to address failures (Newell & Wheeler, 2006b). Relative to this, an evaluation made of some governments like India, Nigeria, and Bangladesh said - ... As Citizenship DRC research in Kenya and South Africa shows, legal frameworks are insufficient if governments do not have the capacity to fulfil their commitments. In some cases such as India, governments are complicit in violating people’s rights and ignoring their own progressive legal frameworks. … People sometimes seek more radical ways to secure their rights when there are few channels of representation and little access to justice. This can result in violence, such as the conflicts over oil in Nigeria. ... Garment workers in Bangladesh wanted accountability from their employers not only to make corporations fulfil their obligations, but as a means to improve their working conditions and livelihoods. (Newell & Wheeler, 2006b) The report found issue with India in ignoring its legal frameworks, Nigeria in providing little access to justice, and Bangladesh in the poor working condition of its garment workers. In all of these, accountability to the people is being called for. Corrections into some myths about accountability reported by the Institute of Development Studies (In Newell & Wheeler, 2006a) may provide more understanding on accountability. For example, lack of accountability is often the result of longstanding patterns of exclusion and corruption; therefore it is not something new. It is also not a problem for developing countries because accountability deficits exist worldwide. More so, accountability is not just about creating checks and balances on state power because it is about much more than this. As it is, globalisation is increasingly requiring that the accountability of intergovernmental bodies, private companies and civil society organisations be addressed (Newell & Wheeler, 2006b). Further, accountability is not just something that is provided by states to citizens as citizens can create it from where they are. Approaches that work in one country can not be applied directly to other locations because distinct institutional, economic, social and cultural factors will determine which initiatives are successful and ‘owned’ by local groups and which are less effective (Newell & Wheeler, 2006). This was emphasized earlier by the differences noted in studies by Glynn (1977), Walsh (1995), Luder (1998), and Johnsson (1996). In sum, the point of making people and organizations more accountable is strongly because resources are owned not just by one person but by collective wholes. 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