Home > Authors > Johan P. Olsen > Democratic Accountability, Political Order, and Change
Democratic Accountability, Political Order, and Change
Ongoing transformations of the political organization of Europe, where both the nation-state and the European Union are challenged, make it possible to explore phenomena that are difficult to see in stable periods. An upsurge in accountability-demands, where political leaders are required to explain and justify what they are doing, is one such phenomenon. Mainstream approaches to democratic accountability, assuming settled principal-agent relations may give insight into the routines of institutional accountability. This book argues that it is not enough to analyze how accountability processes contribute to routinized maintenance of an established order within relatively stable, simple, and well-known situations. We need to understand accountability in eras of institutional confusion and contestation and in dynamic, complex, and unknown situations. First, variations in the relations...
