8 - Defining and Deploying a Benchmark of Accountability

Summary

In order to further demonstrate the difficulties inherent in defining an accountability benchmark, this chapter describes a hypothetical benchmark which offers tentative answers to the series of questions posed in foregoing chapters. It then deploys that benchmark in three real-world scenarios of government maladministration and wrongdoing that might be thought to demand an accountability response. This exercise reveals the difficulty of defining and deploying a benchmark of accountability in the effort to identify areas of deficit and overload, as well as offering a number of areas for further investigation in future accountability studies.