From Public Accountability to Accountee-Ability: Potential and Challenges

This contribution explores the implications of shifting from a government- (accountor-) centred view of public accountability to a perspective that reconsiders more explicitly the plurality of accountees and their “abilities” to hold the government accountable (“accountee-abilities”). The contribution draws on public administration literature on accountability, integrating it with dialogic accounting perspectives, to expand the potential of the accountability concept in accommodating more explicitly the consideration of accountee-abilities. In a global context of democratic backsliding, rising autocratisation, increasing erosion of public services and human rights, there is growing interest in how citizens and other actors hold public sector entities accountable, often empowered by technological advancements. This requires expanding the traditional monological view of public accountability, which emphasises the public sector as the accountor, to adopt a broader perspective that, drawing on dialogical accounting perspectives, considers the plurality of accountees and their abilities to hold the public sector accountable. This expansion has the potential to promote stronger representation and inclusion of diverse identities, interests, and values, while enhancing the public sector's responsiveness to a plurality of needs and expectations. However, it also presents practical challenges and requires scholarly engagement in empirically exploring and understanding the (i) plurality and identities of accountees, (ii) their capacities, and the conditions that shape them, i.e., (a) the relationships and power dynamics between accountors and accountees, (b) the interactions and power imbalances among accountees themselves, and (c) the role of information in these relationships and dynamics. Enhancing accountee-abilities will require identifying concrete solutions to acknowledge the plural identities and capacities of accountees, and to take into consideration the barriers and enablers of accountee-abilities stemming from the concrete interactions between accountors and accountees, those among accountees, and the features of information exchanged in those relationships. Public accountability frameworks and emancipatory and dialogic accounting scholarship have often developed separately but can benefit from reciprocal engagement. This work contributes to bridging the conceptual and practical divide between traditional, institutionalised, and government- and accountor-centric- public accountability and citizen-driven, dialogic forms of accounting and counter-accounts.