Public Accountability: Designs, Dilemmas and Experiences

Description

There is an ongoing perception that public accountability in modern-day governance is in 'crisis', caused by globalization and the increasing power of private economic interests. This book responds to that idea, providing the most comprehensive survey to date of how different organizations hold persons acting in the public interest to account, and the various problems they face. The book shows how key issues, such as public-mindedness, democracy and responsibility, and structures, such as bureaucracy, markets and transparency, adopt radically different and sometimes contradictory interpretations when viewed from different experiential perspectives. It also demonstrates how underlying all this are core communities of experiences that bind these diverse interpretations and perspectives into a complex web of mutual interaction and influence. The book includes studies not only of Anglo-American experiences, but also of the experiences of foreign and transnational organizations: NGOs, transnational resistance movements, the Indonesian labor movement, and the Chinese Parliament.

Chinese University of Hong Kong, Department of Government and Public Administration.

"Dowdle has amassed an all-star cast of established and ascendant scholars in the areas of public law and administrative law whose essays approach the topic from a variety of angles. Indeed, one could not imagine a better list of contributors for this topic. This makes reading the collection a pure treat offering something for every intellectual palette." - The Law and Politics Book Review Ariel Meyerstein, University of California-Berkeley