ABSTRACT
A theory of accountability is necessarily a theory of representation. The rituals (and promises) of reporting, justification, or simple availability for punishment are shaped not only by opaque lines of corporate and individual responsibility in complex organizations (Bovens 1998, 4), but by the claim that organizations and the individuals who work in them subordinate their own interests and agendas in preference to the interests and agendas of others. Indeed, accountability mechanisms are driven by the claim that organizations and individuals ought to subordinate their interests to those of principals. Procedures are required to ensure that everyone remains on the straight and narrow; that they pursue the will or interests of their principals. Political and scholarly invocations of performance (Dubnick 2005) or of “best value” (Boyne et al. 2002) or of prosperity (Dignam 1998) not only constitute attempts to define organizational goals (though they are that), but also demand that organizations work in their principals’ names. In other words, accountability is a matter of representation.
