4 - Who Should Be Held Accountable?

Summary

This chapter looks at the various choices that must be made in deciding who should be held accountable pursuant to an accountability mechanism. Some of the key difficulties discussed include the sheer size and complexity of modern government, particularly in a federal system; that government operations are increasingly performed via co-operation between different entities and individuals, making it difficult to pinpoint a ‘wrongdoer’; the increasing trend of privatisation and outsourcing; and underlying philosophical questions about our conception of government, including whether it should be treated as a corporate entity or a collection of individuals. Once those difficulties have been confronted, it is then necessary to make choices about what approach best suits the selected rationale(s) for accountability. For instance, the desert rationale might favour holding individual wrongdoers directly accountable, whereas the redress rationale might favour holding the government accountable as an entity on the basis that it is in a better position to provide an appropriate remedy.