Conflictual Accountability: Behavioral Responses to Conflictual Accountability of Agencies

• DOI: 10.1177/00953997211004606
• Published date: 01 September 2021
• Date: 01 September 2021
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/00953997211004606

Administration & Society

2021, Vol. 53(8) 1232 –1262

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/00953997211004606

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Article

Conflictual

Accountability:

Behavioral Responses

to Conflictual

Accountability of

Agencies

Thomas Schillemans1, Sjors Overman1,

Paul Fawcett2, Matthew Flinders3,

Magnus Fredriksson4, Per Laegreid5,

Martino Maggetti6,7, Yannis Papadopoulos6,7,

Kristin Rubecksen5, Lise H. Rykkja5,

Heidi H. Salomonsen8, Amanda Smullen9,

Koen Verhoest10, and Matthew Wood3

Abstract

In contemporary public governance, leaders of public organizations are faced

with multiple, and oftentimes conflictual, accountability claims. Drawing

upon a survey of CEO’s of agencies in seven countries, we explore whether

and how conflictual accountability regimes relate to strategic behaviors by

1004606AAS0010.1177/00953997211004606Administration & SocietySchillemans et al.

research-article2021

1Utrecht University, the Netherlands

2University of Melbourne, Australia

3University of Sheffield, UK

4University of Gothenburg, Sweden

5University of Bergen, Norway

6Institute of Political Science (IEP), Switzerland

7University of Lausanne, Switzerland

8Aarhus University, Denmark

9Australian National University, Australia

10University of Antwerp, Belgium

Corresponding Author:

Thomas Schillemans, School of Governance, Utrecht University, Bijlhouwerstraat 6,

Utrecht 3511 ZC, The Netherlands.

Email: T.schillemans@uu.nl

Schillemans et al. 1233

agency-CEO’s and their political principals. The presence of conflictual

accountability is experienced as a major challenge and is associated with

important behavioral responses by those CEO’s. This article demonstrates

empirically how conflictual accountability is related to (a) controlling

behaviors by principals, (b) constituency building behaviors by agencies, and

(c) a general pattern of intensified contacts and information processing by

both parties.

Keywords

accountability, agencies, conflictual accountability, governance

Introduction

The contemporary world of public governance is characterized by multiplic-

ity in a dual sense. On one hand, the execution of many public tasks has

shifted upward, sideward, or downward (Hooghe & Marks, 2003) to a large

variety of agencies that fulfill public tasks while enjoying arm’s-length rela-

tionships with elected politicians (Dommett & MacCarthaigh, 2016; Pierre

& Peters, 2020). On the other hand, these agencies often find their de facto

discretion and autonomy restricted by the existence of dense webs of

accountability (Page, 2006) in which they are held accountable by central

governments as their principals yet also have to cope with (de facto) account-

ability claims from many others, such as regulatory authorities, courts of

audit, clients, and societal stakeholders. This creates one of the prominent

accountability challenges for executive organizations in contemporary gov-

ernance: coping with the conflictual expectations emanating from a multi-

plicity of “accountability forums” (Bovens, 2007; Martin et al., 2018) who

operate on the basis of divergent institutional logics (Romzek & Dubnick,

1987; Thomann et al., 2018).

The dominant stream in the public administration literature relates the mul-

tiplicity of accountability to a range of problems. It often features as a disorder

(Koppell, 2005) leading to dysfunctional outcomes. The “problem of many

eyes” (Bovens et al., 2014: 11) has for instance been identified as the root

cause of technical disasters (Romzek & Dubnick, 1987), dysfunctional orga-

nizations (Koppell, 2005), policy failures (Halachmi, 2014), feelings of shame

and embarrassment (O’Connell & Yusuf, 2018), and as a dilemma for street-

level bureaucrats (Thomann et al., 2018). The basic assumption is that multi-

ple accountability produces conflicting expectations for decision-makers with

dysfunctional effects on various aspects of their behavior. There are, however,