9 - Features in Balance

Summary

This chapter explores the first key idea that must be considered in order to understand accountability mechanisms as a system, which is to appreciate that the system strikes a delicate balance of features as between mechanisms. In many cases, claims about accountability deficits or overload rest on assumptions about particular ‘strengths’ or ‘weaknesses’ of a mechanism. For instance, the high costs of legal proceedings might be cast as a ‘weakness’ of that accountability mechanism and therefore as an accountability deficit. The argument made in this chapter is that these features must be contextualised within the system before such a claim can be made, as the ‘weaknesses’ in one mechanism might be ameliorated by the ‘strengths’ in another. The features reviewed include accessibility, cost, flexibility, coerciveness, autonomy, independence and permanence.