Management of Multiple Accountabilities Through Setting Priorities: Evidence from a Cross-National Conjoint Experiment

Abstract

Abstract: Public sector actors are continuously being held accountable by a multitude of accountability forums. Responding to the forums’ demands often requires prioritizing between them. This study investigates how those prioritization choices are made. Drawing on two competing perspectives: the classical view of accountability as “answerability” which emphasizes hierarchy and control, and the modern interpretation of accountability as “management of expectations” which highlights the strategic management of relations, we identify four factors whose influence on prioritization choices we investigate. Using a conjoint experiment, we investigate the prioritization decisions of civil servants in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. We find that the threat of sanction, which is central in the answerability perspective, is consistently the most important driver of prioritization decisions. The management of expectations, focusing on forum expertise and relationships with the accountability forums, appears to be largely context dependent and helps to explain additional, more fine-grained variations.