Political accountability in eastern and western european democracies. exploring a radial concept
Abstract
This article deals with a central concept of democracy, which is politicalaccountability, its meanings and empirical instances in Eastern and WesternEurope. The concept of accountability has been often used in the comparativepolitics literature, however few authors have tried to pin down its meanings. Untilrecent conceptualizations that are based on the model of radial categories,accountability could hardly be studied empirically duThis article deals with a central concept of democracy, which is politicalaccountability, its meanings and empirical instances in Eastern and WesternEurope. The concept of accountability has been often used in the comparativepolitics literature, however few authors have tried to pin down its meanings. Untilrecent conceptualizations that are based on the model of radial categories,accountability could hardly be studied empirically due to its ambiguous semantics.The results of the qualitative analysis show that there are little differences between East and West concerning the legal provisions on the access to public information.The quantitative analysis shows that the willingness of the citizens to hold stateofficials accountable, through other means than elections, is low in all the fourcountries. In conclusion, France and the UK do not necessarily perform better thanHungary or Romania with regard to societal and representational accountability.Nevertheless, the comparison has a limited scope, but futurestudies could focuson the differences concerning other subtypes of accountability, in old and newdemocracies.e to its ambiguous semantics.The results of the qualitative analysis show that there are little differences betweenEast and West concerning the legal provisions on the access to public information.The quantitative analysis shows that the willingness of the citizens to hold stateofficials accountable, through other means than elections, is low in all the fourcountries. In conclusion, France and the UK do not necessarily perform better thanHungary or Romania with regard to societal and representational accountability.Nevertheless, the comparison has a limited scope, but futurestudies could focuson the differences concerning other subtypes of accountability, in old and newdemocracies.