Both, public sector accountability and public sector performance have been central aspects of administrative reforms within the last decade. Despite the importance of accountability and performance, their relationship is yet understudied. Performance management is commonly expected to increase administrative accountability, however the scope of accountability varies; it has political, administrative, professional, legal and social dimensions (Bovens, 2007; Romzek and Dubnick, 1987). Another position is that that there are tensions between accountability and performance due to incompatibility with each other (Pollitt, 2010). Thus the question what the mechanisms are, if any, that link account giving to individual and organizational performance, is still contested. Indeed, scholars have questioned whether performance information will be honestly reported (Bevan and Hood, 2006), whether the information will be used effectively (Moynihan and Pandey, 2010), whether performance management fits within the overall political institutional framework (Radin, 2010), and ultimately, whether performance reporting requirements improve government performance (Radin, 2010).
Thus, this paper starts with a theoretical discussion on the relationship between performance and accountability in public organizations with a special focus on administrative reforms. Accountability theory is discussed and related to different aspects of performance. How ambiguous is the relationship between accountability and performance? Do different types of accountability relate to different aspects of performance or pose certain challenges in NPM reforms, post-NPM reforms and hybrid reforms? The second part of the paper illustrates accountability and performance relations in two large welfare administration reforms in Norway (NAV-reform) and Germany (Hartz-reform) by addressing the impact of these reforms on accountability and performance dynamics. We focus on how the reforms have affected different kinds of accountability relations and the relationship between accountability and performance. The data used are document studies, interviews and survey data from a large evaluation project.
