Accountability and Democracy: An Assessment

Abstract

It is difficult to assess whether an accountability process following media allegations is democratic or not. Existing methods assess accountability by using crude proxies, such as democracy and elections. A more refined approach measures accountability in terms of investigations, explanations and sanctions. The chapter develops this latter line of research further by contributing an original database and a novel methodology. The book assesses accountability through a multidimensional measure, which encompasses the sanctioning power of various accountability forums, information about the type of accuser, the type of the accusation, the type of explanations that the government gives, the type of investigations and the type of sanctions. The accountability pyramid is the main methodological innovation that the book advances. The accountability pyramid measures how many sanctions various investigations produce, and visualises the relative sanctioning capacity of various investigative bodies.