Accountability and Governance Issues: Introduction to Country Studies

The purpose of this cluster of articles is to support our assertion that beyond a common core of shared understanding of accountability and governance, thinking and dealing with these issues is country specific. As illustrated by the articles in this volume national cultures and administrative traditions may provide better explanations of governance dynamics than general main stream models of accountability. Thus, this symposium highlights possible limitations of general accountability with high level of external validity. This suggests two important things. First, that future research should pay more attention for assuring the internal validity of research designs than to marginal issues that might reduce the external validity of a given study. Second, that comparative studies of accountability and governance across national or ethnic boundaries must control for local variations in the perception of accountability and good governance due to local traditions and cultures. In the first article on The Crisis Effect on Performance Based Budgeting Panagoitis Karkatsoulis provides a comprehensive historical overview of various theoretical approaches toward budgeting and identifies the current financial crisis as an opportunity for the emergence of a sounder budgeting theory, which offers the chance to linking budgeting to a redefined concept of governance. Karkatsoulis calls for a systemic governance which embraces a whole-of-governance approach and an emancipation of social structures. A rebalancing of the global, regional and local identities that participate in the budgeting process is necessary. The redesigned governance system should be self-referential with trust and distrust as important indicators performance indicators for this multi-governance system. Additionally Karkatsoulis offers an inside perspective on the Greek case which must be judged as a typical example for budget failure. When it comes to the issue of accountability the Karakatulis article may bring the learned reader to reflect on the possible implied link(s) in Greece between administrative accountability, economic accountability and political accountability. Though the author does not elaborate nor address explicitlyin the article the nature of the said link(s) the subject certainly deserves more attention.