Governance networks are a potentially effective governance mode for local adaptation to climate change, in which the public authorities cooperate with local stakeholders, including affected citizens. Those local networks, nevertheless, may need different approaches to traditional accountability mechanisms, or may require additional mechanisms for holding such networks to account. So far, little is known about how accountable such emerging local networks for climate adaptation are. In the literature on climate adaptation, accountability is a topic that is still barely addressed, conceptually and empirically. The literature on the accountability of network governance offers interesting conceptualisations of accountability, but there is still a lack of work on evaluation criteria and concrete operationalisations of criteria with which governance networks can be empirically studied.
This Paper contributes to the literature by developing a framework for the empirical assessment of the accountability of local governance networks. Drawing from the literature on network governance and on citizen participation, operationalisations of the framework are proposed, based on five accountability mechanisms: Clarity of Responsibilities, Transparency, Democratic control, Checks & Balances, and Citizen Engagement. The framework is then applied to a network-based climate adaptation project in The Netherlands (Roofpark, Rotterdam), which was studied by conducting a content analysis of formal documents and 12 in-depth interviews with project members.The application shows that the proposed operationalisations of the five mechanisms are suitable for assessing the accountability of local networks. It also indicates that the leadership style and trust relations of the project manager, as the central coordinator in the network, matter: they influence the degree of transparency, democratic control and citizen engagement, regardless of the formalized rules and procedures for engagement and disclosure of information. The Paper concludes with reflections on how such individual factors could be considered in accountability assessment frameworks and some ideas for further research.
