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Accountability and transparency in English local government : moving from ‘matching parts’ to ‘awkward couple’?

Ferry, L. and Eckersley, P. and Zakaria, Z. (2015) 'Accountability and transparency in English local government : moving from ‘matching parts’ to ‘awkward couple’?', Financial accountability and management., 31 (3). pp. 345-361.

Abstract

Although excessive transparency and accountability demands can have a counterproductive effect on organisational performance (Bovens, 2005), longstanding hierarchical accountability structures to ensure financial conformance in English local government continue to endure. Interestingly however, the previously top-down regime for performance accountability in English local government has been replaced by bottom-up mechanisms such as greater transparency and a more open market for public services. Using the framework developed by Hood (2010), this paper will show how such reforms mean that transparency and accountability are moving from being ‘matching parts’ to an ‘awkward couple’, and how this has significant implications for public services.

Item Type:Article
Keywords:Accountability, Transparency, English local government, Budgeting, Performance measurement.
Full text:(AM) Accepted Manuscript
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Status:Peer-reviewed
Publisher Web site:http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/faam.12060
Publisher statement:© 2015 The Authors Financial Accountability & Management Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Date accepted:No date available
Date deposited:27 October 2015
Date of first online publication:03 July 2015
Date first made open access:No date available

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