ABSTRACT
Much of the discussion about discretion and the power to take decisions hovered around the parameters within which the decision was taken. The problem of the criteria used to evaluate the decision, and the extent to which a decision could be tested, surfaces in all the case studies. The clarity of the criteria and their derivation were all from time to time at issue. But in addition to the parameters set for the decision there is also a question of the process and the procedures that ensure accountability. And if those with power are called to account for what they do, who in turn decides the standards by which they are judged? One of the difficulties in dealing with discretionary power is that one set of discretions can all too often be overlaid by another, or as Ham & Hill (1984:160) put it in relation to forms of judicial accountability:
to counteract the discretionary behaviour of officials with the rule of law merely comes up against a further set of discretionary actors, the judges.
