Accountability in times of austerity: democratic and constitutional gains but learning loss?

Introduction In the last decades, the quest for stronger accountability has been a driver of many public sector reforms (Lægreid 2014). Whereas public accountability research in many years was dominated by studies of accountability deficits (Bovens and Schillemans 2014), such deficits may thus not be the primary problem anymore (Bovens and Schillemans 2014; Mulgan 2014). Deficits may have been transformed into overloads as the increased focus on accountability has pro - duced excessive costs, red tape and negative effects on other important public values, such as effectiveness, efficiency, trust and learning (Bovens and Schillemans 2014: 674). In the present context of austerity, accountability arrangements aimed at controlling public expenditure and securing efficient use of scarce resources become of special interest. This chapter analyzes how such accountability arrangements are changed in times of austerity and what the effects of the changes are.