Accountability

This chapter seeks to identify how accountability is exercised (or not) in the case of collaborative forms of governance. It first discusses accountability in interactive governance arrangements in relation to their democratic anchorage, and then scrutinizes the impact on accountability of the prevailing cooperative logic, the weak visibility of governance networks, and their loose coupling with the formal decision-making institutions. It also distinguishes between the collective accountability of governance networks and the individual accountability of participants in them. Finally, it discusses the problem of a possible disjuncture in interactive governance between accountability and democracy.