Accountability through mutual attunement: How can parliamentary hearings connect the elected and the unelected?

Abstract

The increased authority delegated to independent agencies raises questions about the conditions of politically accountable governance, and specifically parliament’s role as a representative institution. Focusing on committee hearings as an accountability mechanism, we ask: How can a parliament employ hearings to ensure that the ends pursued by agencies have a democratic foundation? We propose a model of “mutual attunement” where accountability relations presuppose a process of working-out shared understandings of the ends, means and circumstances of policy needs. We test our argument through a case study assessing the interaction between the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic & Monetary Affairs and the European Securities and Markets Authority. Theoretically, we contribute to discussions on agency accountability and European governance, while providing a novel conceptual model and the first analysis of its kind.

Accountability in EU Economic Governance: European Commissioners in Polish Parliament

“…In contrast to the definition of Bovens and colleagues who claim that "[a]ccountability is furthermore a retrospective ex-post-activity" (Bovens et al, 2014, p. 6), I argue instead that the most valuable form of accountability is ex-ante (Eriksen & Katsaitis, 2020). This is the only time when the forum can not only sanction the actor for bad conduct but also prevent it from happening in the first place, potentially reducing reputational costs (Busuioc & Lodge, 2016).…”

Governance, accountability, and political legitimacy: who participates in the European parliament’s committee hearings (ECON 2004–2014)

“…In turn, the EU's agencies have attempted to manage their reputation by engaging with the EP as a political authority (Busuioc and Lodge 2016). Notably both agencies and committee have met as they attempt to attune their (mutual) responsibilities (Eriksen & Katsaitis 2020).…”

“…Hearings are formal parliamentary procedures through which committees engage with various actors such as executive institutions, regulatory agencies, business interests, and civil society, to name but a few. By leaving them unexamined, we treat a formal procedure as a black box, downplaying calls for further transparency over such procedures (Pedersen, Halpin, and Rasmussen 2015), undervaluing their role as accountability mechanisms (see Eriksen and Katsaitis 2020), and overlooking questions of expertise-bias in the EU's governance (Bunea 2017;Rasmussen and Gross 2015). Overall, this limits the scope of the conceptual debate.…”

Expert accountability: What does it mean, why is it challenging—and is it what we need?

“…There are several studies of expert accountability in relation to particular institutions, such as public agencies (e.g., Busuioc, 2013; Schillemans et al, 2021), central banks (e.g., Heldt & Herzog, 2021), judicial review (e.g., Contini & Mohr, 2007), and parliaments (e.g., Crum, 2017; Eriksen & Katsaitis, 2020). Yet, these studies are typically difficult to compare because they define accountability in different ways or leave definitions implicit or underspecified.…”