ABSTRACT
How do underlying conceptions of power inform the approaches or insights currently used by activists trying to hold the powerful to account? And what is the relationship between power theory and accountability-claiming practice? This chapter revisits contemporary thinking on accountability-claiming, problematising different versions of it through the lenses of power theory and teasing out implications for strategy in ways that can enhance current approaches to securing accountability. After tracing the development of prominent social theories of power, the chapter discusses why accountability activists need to analyse power. The relationships between different versions of power, different understandings of accountability and what we know about the effectiveness of contemporary approaches to claiming accountability are then explored. This perspective directs attention away from mainstream approaches towards others, distant from the realm of academic power theory and aid agency orthodoxy, which engage with power and accountability in all their complexity and make practical power theory out of their struggles.
