Leiden Journal of International Law (2016), 29, pp. 317–342 C  Foundation of the Leiden Journal of International Law 2016 doi:10.1017/S0922156516000042 The Concept(s) of Accountability: Form in Search of Substance DANIELLE HANNA RACHED ∗ Abstract Accountability has become a cornerstone of current discussion on the prospects of legitimate and effective global governance. In spite of its rather high currency, accountability does not partake in the select group of first-order political ideals: democracy, human rights, constitu- tionalism and rule of law have all been historically uttered in much more vocal tones and still remain at the forefront of public demands for legitimate authority. Rather than radiating a comprehensive legal or political vision, accountability supplies a power-constraining toolbox that allows for a variety of more or less attractive permutations. This rather commonplace story, though, tells very little about the concrete configurations, underlying values and ends of accountability. The concept of accountability remains unstable because, among other things, its descriptive and normative aspects lack a clearer articulation; traditional taxonomies fail to precisely illuminate its political and extra-political instantiations, and their respective connec- tion with law; the relevant descriptive variables that shape accountability arrangements are not yet systematized in a comprehensive way; the specific normative goals that lurk behind the calls for more accountability tend to be taken for granted, and the trade-offs or internal tensions that necessarily occur are usually camouflaged. Conceptual clarification, thus, is indispensable whenever one comes across such multifaceted umbrella terms. The article attempts to diagnose such shortcomings, to elucidate a minimalist concept of accountability and to provide a large analytical map that can aid both the description and the critical assessment of accountability arrangements in light of their potential purposes. This analytical exercise is a pivotal starting point if accountability is to get a better grip on the debates about the improvement of global governance. Key words accountability; global governance; legitimacy; co-ordinates of accountability; functions of accountability ‘Every action we take, we take within a set of overlapping accountability regimes’. 1 ∗ LLM and PhD in Public International Law, University of Edinburgh. Post-doctoral Fellow at the International Relations Institute, University of São Paulo [daniellerached@gmail.com]. I owe special thanks to Conrado Hübner Mendes for sharing his views on the topic. I would also like to thank the reviewers for their helpful comments on this article. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the institutional support received from FAPESP (Fundac¸ ˜ao de Amparo `a Pesquisa do Estado de S ˜ao Paulo). 1 J.L. Mashaw, ‘Accountability and institutional design: some thoughts on the grammar of governance.’, in M. Dowdle (ed.), Public Accountability: Designs, Dilemmas and Experiences (2006), 115, at 131. In the same vein, he also maintains: ‘We all feel ourselves accountable in one way or another to scores of other people and institutions. ... The ubiquity of accountability regimes, and our entanglement in scores if not hundreds of them simultaneously, complicates the task of sorting regimes by family, genus and species’ (Ibid., at 118). https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0922156516000042 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 54.70.40.11, on 08 Sep 2019 at 05:49:01, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at