Global Accountabilities
Participation, Pluralism, and Public Ethics

Reevaluates the concept of accountability from a range of cultural, social, and political viewpoints.

Alnoor Ebrahim (Edited by), Edward Weisband (Edited by)

9780521700115, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 6 September 2007

368 pages, 4 b/w illus. 5 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm, 0.49 kg

'Global Accountabilities provides a treasure chest of analytic insights in this era where innovations are desperately needed to overcome fractured and ineffective accountabilities across the state, business and civil society.' Simon Zadek, Chief Executive of AccountAbility, Senior Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University and author of the award winning book The Civil Corporation

Accountability is seen as an essential feature of governments, businesses and NGOs. This volume treats it as a socially constructed means of control that can be used by the weak as well as the powerful. It contributes analytical depth to the diverse debates on accountability in modern organizations by exploring its nature, forms and impacts in civil society organizations, public and inter-governmental agencies and private corporations. The contributors draw from a range of disciplines to demonstrate the inadequacy of modern rationalist prescriptions for establishing and monitoring accountability standards, arguing that accountability frameworks attached to principal-agent logics and applied universally across cultures typically fail to achieve their objectives. By examining a diverse range of empirical examples and case studies, this book underscores the importance of grounding accountability procedures and standards in the divergent cultural, social and political settings in which they operate.

Introduction: 1. Forging global accountabilities Edward Weisband and Alnoor Ebrahim
Part I. Public Accountability: Participatory Spheres from Global to Local: 2. Multilateralism and building stronger international institutions Ngaire Woods
3. Global financial governance and the problem of accountability: the role of the public sphere Randall D. Germain
4. Citizen activism and public accountability: lessons from case studies in India Anne Marie Goetz and Rob Jenkins
Part II. Experiments in Forging NGO Accountability: Mutuality and Context: 5. Multiparty social action and mutual accountability L. David Brown
6. Not accountable to anyone? Collective action and the role of NGOs in the campaign to ban 'blood diamonds' Ian Smillie
7. Bringing in society, culture and politics: values and accountability in a Bangladeshi NGO David Lewis
Part III. Reflective Accountability: New Directions for Participatory Practice: 8. A rights-based approach to accountability Lisa Jordan
9. Evaluation and accountability in emergency relief Coralie Bryant
10. Towards a reflective accountability in NGOs Alnoor Ebrahim
Part IV. Global Accountability Frameworks and Corporate Social Responsibility: 11. Financial actors and instruments in the construction of global corporate social responsibility Michael R. MacLeod
12. Public accountability within transnational supply chains: a global agenda for empowering southern workers? Kate Macdonald
13. Tripartite multilateralism: why corporate social responsibility is not accountability Edward Weisband
Conclusion: 14. Prolegomena to a postmodern public ethics: images of accountability in global frames Edward Weisband.

Subject Areas: Political economy [KCP], Politics & government [JP], Sociology [JHB]