How can development actors like states, NGOs and transnational corporations (TNCs) be held to account by their stakeholders? How have debates on accountability changed amid new development contexts? This paper from the Institute of Development Studies surveys the types of institutions subject to accountability procedures and the mechanisms available to ensure their accountability. It argues that accountability priorities reflect prevailing power structures and that the growing influence of NGOs and transnational corporations (TNCs) has complicated traditional notions of accountability.
“Accountability” refers to authorities’ responsibility to be answerable towards their stakeholders in their exercise of power, implying sanctions for failure to attain identified standards. Nation-states have been the tradition focus for accountability. But with economic liberalisation and “multi-level governance” (in which policy decisions are taken by supranational bodies), accountability has been applied to NGOs and TNCs.
“Accountability gaps” can emerge where political authority or service delivery shifts – from, say, the state to the market – are not accompanied by new accountability mechanisms. Global subsidiarity, which promotes local decision-making, has been advocated to ensure decision-makers are directly accountable to the communities their policies affect.
Accountability processes can be divided along various lines:
- “Top-down” procedures, like elections, in which accountability is conferred from above, and “bottom-up” strategies, like citizen juries, in which it is demanded from below.
- “Horizontal” procedures, where state institutions impose checks and balances on other public bodies, and “vertical” processes, where citizens’ groups monitor government agencies.
- Accountability can have a political focus, in which elected officials must justify policies to the public, or a managerial emphasis, in which “neutral”, non-political actors are subject to fiscal, social and environmental auditing.
- Accountability can be upheld by “soft” sanctions, like exposure of illegitimate practices followed by consumer boycotts, or “hard” sanctions like economic sanctions, international law instruments and the use of force.
With development actors’ increasing emphasis on promoting good governance, accountability must remain at the centre of state-building initiatives. However, actors must find new methods for holding international institutions, NGOs and TNCs accountable:
- New democracies still remain “low quality” in the absence of government openness and public engagement in political life. Accountability for public service delivery is difficult to assign as services are provided by private actors, unregulated by the state. Decentralisation can make governments more responsive to local needs but accountability mechanisms can be harder to enforce at local level.
- International institutions’ accountability to their funders can impose demands opposed to beneficiaries’ interests. In response to recent civil society campaigns, the World Bank has shown greater openness and accountability on environmental and social issues, but the IMF and WTO have implemented fewer accountability mechanisms.
- NGOs have “multiple accountabilities” – to partners, beneficiaries, trustees, donors and host governments – which can impose conflicts of interest. NGOs should expand transparent decision-making and honest reporting to ensure they can be held financially accountable by donors and strategically accountable by local communities.
- With increasing power shifts from governments to TNCs, corporate accountability must be improved. International law can uphold corporations’ rights ahead of states’, although NGO “naming and shaming” strategies and shareholder demands have broadened the scope of corporate responsibility. International guidelines and codes of conducts have been formulated to enable social and environmental reporting of TNCs’ performance.
