Accountability Ecosystems: The Evolution of a Keyword

Efforts to strengthen the accountability of the governing to the governed go back millennia. However, in the past decade there has been a renewed debate about how to advance public accountability. One domain where this conversation has taken place is that of efforts funded by donors (government development agencies and private philanthropies), primarily in the Global South and implemented by a set of national and international actors, including NGOs, private sector project implementors, and international institutions. Unfortunately, much donor-funded work has been underpinned by an understanding of accountability grounded in optimistic assumptions, particularly around the role of transparency and information technology. Early efforts by Rosie McGee and John Gaventa to take stock of this work highlighted the lack of theories of change grounded in a more nuanced, holistic and politically-informed understanding of accountability. Others began questioning the dominant ‘transparency + participation = accountability’ formulation that underpinned many projects; and most of them were just that, projects: start date, end date, work plan, logical framework, funding proposal, budget, etc. It was at the beginning of this discussion about what it takes to achieve real accountability that the term ‘Accountability Ecosystem’ started being used by a few individuals and organizations. The organization I worked for at the time, the Transparency and Accountability Initiative (TAI), had picked up the term, potentially from the organization I work for now, the International Budget Partnership (IBP).[i] I saw the term as a way to advance a more holistic and dynamic way to talk about the interaction of accountability actors, mechanisms and efforts in a given context, and a deliberate step away from more simplistic, linear formulations.