Accountability, Interinstitutional

The Nature of Interinstitutional Accountability

Institutions may be accountable vertically and horizontally. Vertical accountability, that is, electoral accountability, exists when institutions are exposed to the control of the voters and the citizens. Technically, the voters and the citizens are the principals and the institutions are the agents. [Page 17]The citizen/voters delegate some representatives in institutions such as government and parliament to perform some tasks. They retain the capacity and the power to reward or punish a government and/or a parliament/congress. In this situation, vertical accountability is said to be at work. This type of accountability is the hallmark of democratic regimes. Where vertical accountability does not exist, there is no democracy, though, of course, a democratic regime requires and provides much more than just “vertical accountability.” On the other hand, horizontal accountability is a relationship established among institutions: the executive, the legislative (parliament or congress), the bureaucracy, the military organization, the judiciary, and independent authorities. It occurs when the various institutions in different ways are in a position to control the activities of another specific institution. This type of control can be reciprocal and balanced, one-sided and skewed, formal and informal, accompanied by predefined sanctions, or largely symbolic.

Notwithstanding their often very significant differences, all these relationships can be legitimately assigned to the area of what is called “interinstitutional accountability.” In a way, horizontal-interinstitutional accountability is a much more complex relationship to be studied, first of all, because it is not dyadic (voters–leaders) and may entail the activities of more than two institutions. Second, not only is it less transparent than any electoral process, but it is also less streamlined. Inter institutional accountability is also made more complicated by the sheer fact that it is the product of a fair amount of reciprocal interaction and mutual influence. For this reason, its full understanding requires a profound knowledge of the dynamics of the entire political-institutional system. Finally, the study of horizontal-interinstitutional accountability is also more likely to be influenced by the values of the scholars, who may prefer the stability to the instability of the policy process and the concentration of political decision-making power to its diffusion, or, more rarely, vice versa. In different periods of time, some of these preferences, and values, advocated and shared by scholars and power holders, have been translated into concrete institutional arrangements. Indeed, a short exploration of selected constitutional outcomes is a good introduction to the analysis of interinstitutional accountability.

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