What the book is about
The book strives to find the links between three themes:
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Theme I: The crisis of democracy
Theme II: Government Accountability
Theme III: Media Scandals
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Chapter 1: Government Accountability in the Media Age: How to Measure, Explain and Assess It?
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Abstract: It is important to dedicate scholarly effort to understanding the dynamics of government accountability in the eve of media accusations. The importance comes from both the frequency of medial allegations and the lack of methodological clarity how to assess their aftermath. Interdisciplinary and multi-dimensional thinking is the only way to gain a thorough and comprehensive understanding of the problem. This first chapter lays out the blueprint that the book devises and uses to investigate government accountability in the Media Age. It starts from the realization that the Media Age is just one of many important determinants. The book then enlarges the discussion to include both the concept of public demand for executive accountability and the supply of accountability forums and issues. It applies the theoretical notions of supply and demand to Germany, Russia and Bulgaria. Then it uses the empirical findings to revisit abstract debates about the crisis and transformation of democracy.
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Keywords: government, accountability, media, democracy, demand, supply
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Chapter 2: Government Accountability: An Ambiguous Relationship
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Abstract: This chapter argues that the advancement in telecommunication technologies has not definitively made governments more or less accountable for allegations revealed in the media. It seeks to demonstrate that, theoretically speaking, the media have a double-sided influence on accountability. This realization serves as the starting point of this book’s discussion about the larger context that defines the determinants of executive accountability. Following the recognition that the media technology can bring both negatives and positives for executive accountability, the chapter introduces a broader notion of supply of and demand for accountability, which decidedly surpasses the very ambiguous, and in the end, limited, influence of the communication technologies.
Keywords: media, accountability, ownership, forums, communication, technology
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Chapter 3: Supply of Accountability and the Accountability Turn
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Abstract: This chapter introduces the notion of the accountability turn. The accountability turn signifies the growing importance and change of the supply of accountability forums, such as courts, the prosecutor, international bodies and arms length organizations. The accountability turn promotes the idea that we need to think more intensely about how costly and how specialized different forums are. That is so because various forums entail different financial, reputational and other costs. Furthermore, different forums resolve the trade-off between democratic legitimacy versus specialised knowledge differently. The accountability turn has been spurred by the implosion of the electoral paradigm and the explosion of the accountability revolution. The accountability turn challenges existing concepts of the representative, participatory, deliberative, aesthetic and other turns.
Keywords: accountability, supply, courts, forums, legitimacy, specialisation
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Chapter 4: The Demand for Accountability and Public Fragmentation
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Abstract: The chapter suggests that the debate about public demand for government accountability is misguided. Currently, it is too focused on inquiring whether the public expects too little or too much accountability from the government. Instead, public demand for accountability should be explored through the lens of public fragmentation. The chapter summarizes the diverse scholarship on public fragmentation. It suggests that the public is fragmented because of party de-alignment, modernisation, marketisation and the mutually opposing forces of globalisation and decentralisation. The main implication is that the notion of the diversity of the public challenges the principle of the aggregation of preferences.
Keywords: accountability, demand, public, fragmentation, sovereignty, state, flobalisation
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Chapter 5: Accountability and Democracy: An Assessment
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Abstract: It is very difficult to assess whether an accountability process following media allegations is democratic or not. Existing methods assess accountability by using crude proxies, such as democracy and elections. A more refined approach measures accountability in terms of investigations, explanations and sanctions. The chapter develops this latter line of research further by contributing an original database and a novel methodology. The book assesses accountability through a multidimensional measure, which encompasses the sanctioning power of various accountability forums, information about the type of accuser, the type of the accusation, the type of explanations that the government gives, the type of investigations and the type of sanctions. The accountability pyramid is the main methodological innovation that the book advances. The accountability pyramid measures how many sanctions various investigations produce, and visualizes the relative sanctioning capacity of various investigative bodies.
Keywords: accountability, democracy, elections, media, sanctions, investigations
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Chapter 6: De-parliamentarisation of Government Accountability in Germany: Crisis or Transformation of Democracy?
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Abstract: Using the methodological framework set out in chapter five, this chapter assesses the German government accountability in the aftermath of media allegations. It establishes that the German parliament is the main forum for investigating the government but its ability to sanction the incumbents is eclipsed by the EU, the prosecutor and internal ministerial investigations. The findings reveal an interesting trend: While the role of parliament as a venue for imposing accountability may have diminished, the role of political parties as main players in the accountability processes has been preserved but it has metamorphosed and moved beyond parliament. Parties continue to be an important factor for sanctioning the government through party meetings outside the legislature, through the popularity of the opposition party, and others. These empirical trends could serve as a novel basis for appraising democracy through the lens of government accountability.
Keywords: Germany, parliament, party, democracy, media, European Union
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Chapter 7: The Presidentialisation of Government Accountability in Russia: Crisis or Transformation of Democracy?
Abstract: Using the methodological framework set out in chapter five, this chapter assesses the Russian government accountability in the aftermath of media allegations. The chapter finds that the Russian president steers the accountability process, whenever government officials are criticised in the media. The empirical findings unravel the concrete ways in which the president interferes with post-scandals accountability, such as the president making decisions whether to sanction alleged incumbents on the basis of the president’s approval ratings and the president having a disproportionately big influence in producing sanctions in comparison to the legislature and the courts. Furthermore, the chapter argues that the process of presidentialisation goes hand in hand with the process of personalization of accusations, personalization of sanctions and the personalization of the prosecutorial office. The results constitute good indicators for gauging the tipping point when a presidential regime becomes super-presidential, thus assessing the state of democracy through the lens of accountability.
Keywords: Russia, president, media, Putin, Yeltsin, democracy
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Chapter 8: Judicialisation of Government Accountability in Bulgaria: Crisis or Transformation of Democracy?
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Abstract: Using the methodological framework set out in chapter five, this chapter assesses the Bulgarian government’s accountability in the aftermath of media allegations. The empirical findings depict a trend of judicialisation of accountability in Bulgaria, which means that when the government is criticised in the media, the prosecutor and the courts are likely to be involved in sanctioning and investigating the implicated incumbents. These findings contribute to the vibrant theoretical debate as to whether judicialisation enhances democracy and whether it benefits the elites or the public in terms accessibility, legitimacy, contestability, uncertainty, aggregation of demands and intimidation. Specifically, the chapter argues that the judicialisation of accountability in Bulgaria has had a two-sided effect on democracy. On the negative side, prosecutorial investigations of media allegations have been used by the elites to threaten opponents, legitimise threats and gain time. On the positive side, court review of various media allegations has allowed the public greater access to the political process, a more appropriate forum for resolving non-political issues and has provided a more fact-based public discourse.
Keywords: Bulgaria, courts, prosecutor, democracy, media, elite, public
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Chapter 9: Democracy Through the Prism of Accountability: Comparison with Models of the Crisis and Transformation of Democracy
Abstract: The book presents a model of democracy viewed through the lens of government accountability in the aftermath of media allegations. This approach contributes a novel perspective to evaluating democracy. Set in an analytical framework of supply and demand, it challenges, revises and refines existing assumptions, approaches and measurements of democratic progress and regress. It suggests that we should measure supply not only in terms of economic growth or representative institutions, but also in terms of the various opportunities that accountability forums provide. This vision, which I call the “accountability turn,” challenges existing notions of increasing supply through the representative or the deliberative turns. The model also suggests that public demand should not be perceived as too low or too high but that the very constellation of demand has changed and it is expressed differently. Third, the model propounds that demand and supply interact at multiple levels rather than supply falling short of demand or supply refining demand, as present models of democracy propose. Finally, the model contributes new empirical manifestations of the crisis and transformation of democracy.
Keywords: accountability, fragmentation, democracy, crisis, transformation
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Chapter 10: Contemporary Models of the Crisis of Democracy: Critical Overview Through a Demand and Supply Framework
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Abstract: Analysed within the framework of supply and demand, contemporary models of the crisis of democracy could be divided into two broad types: supply-based and demand-based models. The supply-based theories interpret the crisis as the government’s failure to deliver economic growth, the failure of the state to come up with proper welfare policies or the failure of representative institutions to gain public trust. The demand-based models of the crisis of democracy suggest that the crisis arises because the public has unrealistically high expectations of the government or for exactly the opposite reasons, namely that people are apathetic and do not demand enough from the incumbents. It is the differences between the emphasis on supply and demand, and the way supply and demand are defined that sets these models apart.
Keywords: crisis, democracy, supply, demand, economy, state, expectations
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Chapter 11: Models of the Transformation of Democracy: Critical Overview Through a Demand and Supply Framework
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Abstract: Seen through the analytical framework of supply and demand, all models of the transformation of democracy agree that supply is expandable and that public demand is active. However, they have very different explanations as to why this is the case. It is a point of contention whether the expansion of supply is caused by the representative, agonistic, cultural, deliberative, participatory or some other “turn.” Another line of argument inquiries whether people demand more because the public is fragmented or homogenized.
Keywords: democracy, transformation, deliberative turn, participatory turn, international turn
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