Accountability and Control in Governance- UGC NET Political Science

Introduction

Accountability is administered in a Parliamentary system through questions, debates, discussions, budgetary approvals, committees and other methods by Parliament. It is significant to understand the relevancy of accountability and control, as it is the pre requisite of good governance with special reference to administrative culture present in the Indian society.

Accountability and Control

Accountability may refer to the legal and hierarchial views of responsibility. It denotes specific methods and procedures which help to enforce the responsibility of civil servants. Administrative accountability seeks to ensure optimisation of the available resources at the same time to realise the organisational goals. Control may be defined as the process of checking whether actions are being taken as planned or in the desired way and taking corrective action to make them conform to decisions. Control process tries to find performance and suggest corrective actions when needed.

Types of Accountability

The concept of accountability can be classified according to the types of accountability exercised and according to the answers given by the public officials to the person, group or institution. The main forms of accountability are described below in reference to their opposing or alternate concept

Vertical vs Horizontal Accountability

Vertical Accountability refers to the ability of a state’s population to hold its government accountable through elections and political parties.

Horizontal Accountability refers to the intra-governmental control mechanism between the Legislature, Executive and Judiciary and different sub-entities of the executive including cabinet, ministries and lower level administrative departments. The prevailing view is that institutions of accountability, such as Parliament and the Judiciary provide horizontal accountability or the capacity of a network of relatively autonomous powers (i.e. other institutions).

These autonomous institutions can call into question and eventually punish improper ways of discharging the responsibilities of a given official.

In other words, horizontal accountability is the capacity of state institutions to check abuses by other public agencies and branches of government or the requirement for agencies to report sideways.

Alternatively, vertical accountability is the means through which citizens, mass media and civil society seek to enforce standards of good performance on officials. While, Parliament is typically considered as a key institution in constructs of horizontal accountability but Parliament is also important in vertical accountability.

Political vs Legal Accountability

Political accountability is the accountability of the government, civil servants and politicians towards the public and to legislative bodies such as Parliament. On the others hand, legal accountability refers to the theory under the law to find culpability such as a crime. Individuals should be noted accountable by the state they occurred in.

Parliament and the Judiciary act as horizontal constitutional checks on the power of the executive. The role of these two institutions can be further described that Parliament holds the executive politically accountable, while the Judiciary holds the executive legally accountable.

These classifications arise from the fact Parliament is a political institution, while the Judiciary can only adjudicate on legal issues. Together, they provide ongoing oversight in order to keep the government accountable throughout its term in office.

They may also be aided by other institutions, such as supreme audit institutions, anti-corruption commissions, ombuds offices and human rights institutes. These secondary autonomous institutions of accountability are typically designed to be independent of the executive.

Political accountability usually manifests itself in the concept of individual ministerial responsibility, which is the cornerstone of the notion of responsible government.