Accountability: Can we now translate it into Portuguese?

Abstract

The main purpose of this article is to see whether the political, social and institutional changes that took place in Brazil in the last years have contributed to give a meaning to the term accountability, after two decades since Anna Maria Campos published an interesting paper about the absence of this concept in the country. The article presents an exploratory, analytical and descriptive study, carried out under a qualitative methodology, which, besides researching the meaning of accountability in dictionaries and subsequent papers to the study by Campos, analyzed in the specialized literature the main changes that occurred in the Brazilian society in relation to its organization, as well as decentralization, government transparency and the emergence of new social attitudes in place of traditional values. Although there has been some progress, it is still very difficult to reach a conclusive answer for this question. The answer is closer than it was when Campos first searched for it, but we are still far from building a comprehensive accountability culture.