Over the last twenty years, the OECD countries have adopted and implemented a set of policy instruments to make public administration more accountable, in the context of new public management reforms. In this paper we first introduce our original dataset of accountability instruments coded on 18 OECD countries. We then use qualitative comparative analysis to explore the different accountability recipes that condition the business environment. For the latter, we draw on measures from the Doing Business database. Previous research suggests a strong causal link between regulatory quality, ease of business and growth. We contribute to this discussion in two ways. First, we do not look at narrow measure of regulatory quality but consider broader accountability instruments. Second, we expose how particular accountability tools fit together to generate conditions for ‘doing business’ as measured by the World Bank. In the conclusions, we reflect on the patterns identified, their implications for wicked issues, and how our empirical findings may be extended to further explanatory analyses.
