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Democratic accountability and the terms of political order

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 April 2016

Johan P. Olsen
Johan P. Olsen*
Affiliation:
ARENA, Centre for European Studies, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
*
*E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This paper explores the shifting significance of accountability processes and why they sometimes attract considerable public attention and citizens’ involvement, whereas at other times they escape public notice. Accountability processes are conceived of as order-maintaining or order-transforming processes and I interpret the recent obsession with democratic accountability as part of a struggle over the terms of political order. This paper attends to the importance of political association involving different mixes of unity/diversity, trust/mistrust, and historical experiences; political organization and the ordering routines, ideas, and resources of different institutions; and political agency and shifting attention, zones of acceptance, and action capabilities.

Keywords

democratic accountabilitypolitical orderinstitutionscitizenslearning
Type
Research Article
Information
European Political Science Review , Volume 9 , Issue 4 , November 2017 , pp. 519 - 537
Copyright
© European Consortium for Political Research 2016 

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