From the traditional definition of accountability as a relationship between an actor and a forum – in which the actor has the obligation to inform and justify its decisions and actions, while the forum has the right to evaluate and sanction such decisions and actions –, the majority of the research on accountability has focused on the analysis of the mechanisms carried out by the "actor". In particular, accountability has been studied more as a hierarchical control mechanism between different administrative levels than as a social relation between the citizens and their governments.
In this article, I analyze the widest accountability forum for governments: the citizens. The aim of this paper is to analyze the citizens’ perception of political accountability. Using the European Social Survey (2012) and the Quality of Government Survey (2012), firstly, I will measure the level of political accountability in the 28 European Union (EU) countries, in order to identify to what extent citizens perceive their governments as accountable. Secondly, I will examine the effect of a set of variables on the differences in the levels of political accountability: type of welfare state model adopted by countries (or the absence of it), private management in the implementation of social policies, ideological position of governments (left/right), political decentralization (unitary, federal or quasi-federal state), and government effectiveness, controlling by other potential explanations (such as economic development, inequality, unemployment, corruption). From this analysis, it will be possible to identify whether a greater presence of private management in the implementation of public policies leads to lower perceived accountability, or whether the adoption of a specific type of welfare state can be related to greater accountability.
