Political Accountability in Public Service скачать в хорошем качестве

Political Accountability in Public Service

The American policy process entrusts government career administrators with an extraordinary responsibility for the implementation of public policy. Political accountability normally is taken to mean that administrative agencies are subject to the supervening authority of elected officials. Typically, this political accountability includes dual responsibility to the chief executive, who provides administrative oversight, and to the legislative branch, which creates the legal and budget authority for the agency. Serving two political authorities at the same time can obviously pose policy implementation problems for administrators. These problems will not arise as long as the legislative body has internal agreement on what needs to be done, provides clear policy guidelines and is in agreement with the executive branch on agency direction. Even under these conditions, however, there is extensive administrative discretion that needs to be kept accountable. The burden of maintaining bureaucratic accountability is a multipronged undertaking that includes reliance on organizational and legal processes, in addition to political accountability to the two major branches of governance.