Accounting for Accountability

• Date: 01 May 2014
• Published date: 01 May 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12220

424 Public Administration Review • May | June 2014

see http://f‌i scaltransparency.net), and participatory

budgeting, which the Barack Obama administration

def‌i ned as “giving citizens a voice in how taxpayer dol-

lars are spent in their communities.”1

In many ways, this plan for “open government”

responds to mounting criticism regarding President

Obama’s surveillance policies and attempts to counter

the dysfunction associated with f‌i scal impasses and

budget shutdowns. Such a dose of transparency

could bolster the American government’s credibility.

Strikingly, the plan follows models set by middle-

income countries rather than establishing the United

States as the vanguard in innovative administrative

Sanjeev Khagram, Archon Fung, and Paolo de Renzio,

eds., Open Budgets:  e Political Economy of

Transparency, Par ticipation, and Accountability

(Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2013).

264 pp. $29.95 (paper), ISBN: 9780815723370.

In December 2013, the White House announced

its second-ever Open Government National

Action Plan.  e f‌i ve highlighted areas for action

included improvements to the Freedom of Information

Act, petitioning platforms, and greater data availabil-

ity.  e remaining two highlighted areas dealt with

f‌i nancial accountability, more specif‌i cally, membership

in the Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency (GIFT;

Accounting for Accountability

Sonia M. Ospina and Rogan Kersh, Editors

Celina Su

Brooklyn College, City University of New York

Celina Su is associate professor of

political science at Brooklyn College, City

University of New York. Her publications

include Streetwise for Book Smarts:

Grassroots Organizing and Education

Reform in the Bronx (Cornell University

Press, 2009), Our Schools Suck: Young

People Talk Back to a Segregated

Nation on the Failures of Urban

Education (coauthored, New York

University Press, 2009), and Introducing

Global Health: Practice, Policy, and

Solutions (coauthored, Jossey-Bass, 2013).

Her honors include a Berlin Prize. She has

served on New York City’s participatory

budgeting Steering Committee since its

inception in 2011.

E-mail: celinasu@gmail.com