Promoting Accountability in Multilevel Governance: A Network Approach

Abstract

: This article addresses problems of accountability in the system of multilevel governance, organised around networks, as it exists in the EU. An ‘accountability deficit’ arises when gaps are left by the accountability machinery of the several levels of government, supranational and national. This article suggests a new evaluative framework based on the concept of ‘accountability network’, questioning the hierarchical and pyramidal assumptions that presently underpin accountability theory in the EU context. Using case studies of the Community courts and European Ombudsman, the article suggests that ‘accountability networks’ may be emerging, composed of agencies specialising in a specific mode of accountability, which come together or coalesce in a relationship of support, fortified by shared professional expertise and ethos. At present fragmentary and imperfect, these might ultimately be capable of providing effective machinery for accountability in network governance systems.

Twenty years of multi-level governance: ‘Where Does It Come From? What Is It? Where Is It Going?’ *

“…Peters and Pierre (2004) saw MLG as compromising democracy and called it a 'Faustian bargain' -had policy-making sold its soul? Harlow and Rawlings (2006) recognized an 'accountability deficit' in MLG which had itself become organized around self-organizing, self-regulating networks. With governance essentially about co-operation and co-ordination, traditional government control systems were 'undermined'.…”

New Forms of Accountability and EU-Governance

“…The establishment of administrative accountability forums, such as OLAF, the European Court of Audits, and the European Ombudsman, have been very important to establish a series of checks and balances on the exercise of European governance, both on the national and the European level. They create networks of formal and informal, multi-level accountability regimes that can help to keep the various executive bodies in check (Scott, 2000, 54;Harlow and Rawlings, 2006). Quite a few of the newly established European agencies, for example, are being subjected to a series of administrative, financial, and legal accountability arrangements that do not offer democratic control, but at least may effectively prevent them from becoming small Leviathans.…”

“…The multi-level character of European governance has added another dimension to this, because public organizations may be held accountable both by national and by European forums (Scott, 2000, 51). Increasingly accountability forums seem to come together to form multi-level accountability networks, in which expertise and information is shared and in which European and national forums work together to hold European actors to account (Harlow and Rawlings, 2006). An early example is the ECJ conversing with national courts at the various stages of the legal accountability process.…”

The Multi-Level Governance of Intra EU Movement

“…Indeed, some authors within the multi-level governance literature, as well as actors in the public sphere -in particular the EU itself -have worked from an assumption that multi-level governance is, by default, a desirable outcome where the problem context can be framed as multi-level in nature. Such excessively positive portrayals of multi-level governance have been called into question by scholars over the past decades, with arguments being made that multi-level governance has the potential to compromise democracy (Guy Peters and Pierre 2004), in essence undermining the principles of traditional government through facilitating for the establishment of self-organizing and self-regulating networks apart from traditional governing institutions (Harlow & Rawlings 2007).…”