Holding the public sector accountable
Providing redress for maladministration is a key requirement of any legitimate system of public service delivery. During the 6th. International Conference on Public Policy, held in Toronto, Canada, 27-29 June 2023, Eckart Schroeter and Sven T. Siefken organize a panel that explores different ways of holding public authorities and agents of public service delivery accountable. The guiding question is: What roles for parliaments, executives and citizens? Below is the complete Call for Papers, we look forward to proposals, please submit them by January 31, 2023.
Call for Papers
Holding the public sector accountable:
What roles for parliaments, executives, and citizens?
for the 6th International Conference on Public Policy
to be held in Toronto, Canada, 27-29 June 2023
Providing redress for maladministration is a key requirement of any legitimate system of public service delivery. The panel explores different ways of holding public authorities and agents of public service delivery accountable. Public sector control and accountability is a salient and recurrent issue in the analysis of public policy and its implementation and evaluation in particular. Against this background, we seek to combine institutional political science perspectives (focusing on relations between the branches of government as well as on the dynamics of parliamentary behavior) with public administration research (with an eye on public service delivery and organizational behavior in the public sector).
Relevant research questions revolve around contextual differences of control and accountability systems. We hypothesize that institutional arrangements for holding public sector agents accountable will differ across time horizons and national boundaries depending, for example, on prevailing notions of the state, political system characteristics (presidential vs. parliamentary systems of government), types of executive government, political competition and party systems, modes of interest representation, but also on different types of public services rendered (ranging from street-level bureaucracies to regulatory tasks of government agencies to public policy making functions of ministerial governments) and varieties of public policy fields (ranging from extended welfare services to planning functions and potentially repressive agencies of the state, involving the use of physical force). In doing so, the panel investigates the variety of ways of holding the executive apparatus of the state accountable, particularly in light of their comparative advantages and disadvantages as well as their embeddedness in different politico-administrative systems.
The panel invites contributions that address analytical questions about the functioning of control, oversight and accountability in different political systems and across various types of public services. Theoretical and conceptual expositions as well as empirical analyses are sought that that may employ various research methods. We are looking for papers that address the topics broadly from a system’s perspective or provide a detailed analysis of particular institutions and processes, such as parliamentary oversight and scrutiny, ombudspersons, audit systems, citizen review and citizen watch organizations. Comparative perspectives across time, national borders or different cases of policing are particularly encouraged.
The panel will be organized onsite with an option to present papers online as well as in-person. The Call for Papers is open until January 31, 2023. Please submit your proposal via Conference website: https://www.ippapublicpolicy.org/conference/icpp6-toronto-2023/17
If there are any questions or suggestions, please contact the panel organizers: Eckhard Schroeter (German University of the Police) or Sven T. Siefken (Institute for Parliamentary Research, Berlin).
