Conceptualizing throughput legitimacy: Procedural mechanisms of accountability, transparency, inclusiveness and openness in EU governance

Abstract

This symposium demonstrates the potential for throughput legitimacy as a concept for shedding empirical light on the strengths and weaknesses of multi‐level governance, as well as challenging the concept theoretically. This article introduces the symposium by conceptualizing throughput legitimacy as an ‘umbrella concept’, encompassing a constellation of normative criteria not necessarily empirically interrelated. It argues that in order to interrogate multi‐level governance processes in all their complexity, it makes sense for us to develop normative standards that are not naïve about the empirical realities of how power is exercised within multi‐level governance, or how it may interact with legitimacy. We argue that while throughput legitimacy has its normative limits, it can be substantively useful for these purposes. While being no replacement for input and output legitimacy, throughput legitimacy offers distinctive normative criteria—accountability, transparency, inclusiveness and openness—and points towards substantive institutional reforms.

Burdens of transparency: An analysis of public sector internal auditing

“…This focus creates a direct connection between internal auditors, accountability and transparency requirements (Schmidt and Wood ). This perspective is also supported by Michener and Bersch () who conclude that the traceability of information determines the openness of an organization.…”

“…The traceability of information acts as an antidote to ‘creative’ accounting and limits the potential for blame‐shifting and ‘spinning’ associated with misleading disclosures. The perspective we adopt thus recognizes that transparency, blame and accountability are intrinsically linked in public sector accountability systems (Roberts ; Worthy 2010; Schmidt and Wood ). Consequently, public sector internal auditors shoulder a substantial share of the burden associated with transparency requirements.…”

“…This suggests that transparency policies may be having an adverse effect on the effectiveness of internal auditing as an accountability mechanism. Since transparency reforms are meant to enhance procedural or ‘throughput’ legitimacy (Schmidt and Wood ), we argue that the concerns of professionals tasked with verifying the integrity and robustness of control, governance and risk management processes should be taken seriously.…”

Health “Brexternalities”: The Brexit Effect on Health and Health Care outside the United Kingdom

“…Of course, such arrangements are incomplete, but compared to other trade agreements or international institutional infrastructures, the EU's decisionmaking processes, including their reviewability by national and EU courts, do a relatively good job of including within policy decisions those entities and people who will be affected by such decisions. Not every "outsider" is so included, but the EU manages inclusion through a range of legitimacy and accountability processes (Schmidt and Wood 2019), all of which are legally mandated, in that the EU is itself a creature of law and operates on a substantively and procedurally constitutionalized basis, constrained by legal competences.…”

“…They leave out accountability to those who are affected, whether within the state concerned (for instance, the question of where EU-held powers are repatriated; McHale et al 2020) or beyond it. Decisions are not subject to input, output, or throughput legitimacy (Schmidt 2013;Schmidt and Wood 2019) in terms of their external effects: the sovereignty of the nation state (the UK) is here a cipher for appropriate decision making.…”