ABSTRACT
The emerging hard and soft law frameworks for regulating the human rights, labor, and environmental responsibilities of economic enterprises (whether public or private) are to some extent operationalized through mechanisms of accountability. Thus, accountability occupies a central place within the complex of regulatory trends that are shaping the organization of economic (and, to some extent, social, political, and cultural) life within a globalized order. The purpose of this chapter is to unpack the concept of accountability as it is deployed in governance, and then to repack it in a way that makes the concept more useful. The thesis of the chapter is that accountability must be understood as a shorthand for a set of multiple reciprocal relations, manifested in actions responding to expectations that are grounded in normative standards actualized in the context within which the actors are connected, and directed toward general (communal) and specific (individual) ends. A working system of accountability centered on corporate violations of human rights and sustainability requires mutual and simultaneous accounting by all stakeholders to (1) bring each other to account, (2) bring oneself to account, and (3) be brought to account. The second part of the chapter examines the strands of premises that constitute the complex of concepts for which the shorthand term “accountability” is used. It examines a core set of orienting principles that are central to the concept of accountability as a governance norm and as the instrument of that norm. It examines a core set of orienting principles central to the concept of accountability as a governance norm and as the instrument of that norm. The former touches on the behavioral core of accountability as (a) the act of answering to and explaining in relation to an expectation; (b) to a specific and functionally segmented objective; (c) manifested as conduct, norms, methods, consequences; (d) directed to oneself to others; and (e) to the specific ends of making right, disciplining behavior to ensuring order. These rational and functionally constrained actions then suggest the ways in which rendering accounts can be manifested to the intended beneficiaries of the accounting. The third part of the chapter then re-bundles accountability. The first section looks at its objectives (why account?). Objectives include norm generation, good governance, institutional legitimacy, and remedial mechanisms. The second section considers the systemic elements of accountability systems. Its methods of accountability (institutional and formal or informal) and its governance sources (law or norms) shape the expression of accountability and define its context. The third section then considers the subjects of accountability systems (who accounts and who is accountable): States, enterprises, international organizations, and civil society/NGOs.
