Accountability and Governance Issues: Introduction

Accountability is high on the public agenda for reasons that have to do with issues such as the recent economic, environmental and homeland security problems that resulted from government policies. The public has questioned the content of government policies or the way they were implemented in cases like the Fall 2008-Spring 2009 financial crisis in the USA or the Spring 2010 budget crisis in Greece, the climatic consequences from the global warming or the unfortunate stream of stories about foiled terrorist attempts on airplanes and at sport facilities or the senseless killings on a military base by a military psychiatrist. As readers of this issue may recall, in the aftermath of the carnage, military documents showed clear evidence of two things. First, that the individual had a track record of incompetence and ample warning signs that he should not be retained as a career officer. Second, a reckless disregard of many poor performance evaluations due to "political correctness" by those ranking officers that oversaw his immediate supervisors. Questions about the performance of government employees in all of these and many other cases express public frustration and eroding confidence in government. The diminishing trust in government due to a shared public feeling that there is lack of accountability has direct and undesired implications for government operations.