Concept of responsibility in ethics, governance and decision-making
Accountability, in terms of ethics and governance, is equated with answerability, culpability, liability, and the expectation of account-giving.
As in an aspect of governance, it has been central to discussions related to problems in the public sector, nonprofit, private (corporate), and individual contexts. In leadership roles, accountability is the acknowledgment of and assumption of responsibility for actions, products, decisions, and policies such as administration, governance, and implementation, including the obligation to report, justify, and be answerable for resulting consequences.
In governance, accountability has expanded beyond the basic definition of "being called to account for one's actions". It is frequently described as an account-giving relationship between individuals, e.g. "A is accountable to B when A is obliged to inform B about A's (past or future) actions and decisions, to justify them, and to suffer punishment in the case of eventual misconduct."
Accountability cannot exist without proper accounting practices; in other words, an absence of accounting means an absence of accountability. Another key area that contributes to accountability is good records management.
History and etymology.
"Accountability" derives from the late Latin (to account), a prefixed form of (to calculate), which in turn is derived from (to reckon). While the word itself does not appear in English until its use in 13th century Norman England, the concept of account-giving has ancient roots in record-keeping activities related to governance and money-lending systems that first developed in Ancient Egypt, Israel, Babylon, Greece, and later Rome.
Political accountability.
Political accountability is when a politician makes choices on behalf of the people, and the people have the ability to reward or sanction the politician. In representative democracies, citizens delegate power to elected officials through periodic elections, and such officials are empowered to represent or act in the citizens' interest. A challenge is how to see to it that those with such power, who presumably have divergent interests from the citizens, nonetheless act in their best interests. Citizens can rely on rewards or sanctions to reward or threaten politicians who might otherwise act in a manner that is antithetical to the people's interest. Accountability occurs when citizens only vote to re-elect representatives who act in their interests, and if representatives then select policies that will help them be re-elected. "Governments are 'accountable' if voters can discern whether governments are acting in their interest and sanction them appropriately, so that those incumbents who act in the best interest of the citizens win reelection and those who do not lose them."
Representatives can be held accountable through two mechanisms: electoral replacement and rational anticipation. In electoral replacement, citizens vote to replace representatives who are out of step with their interests. Rational anticipation requires that representatives anticipate the consequences of being out of step with their constituency and then govern in accordance with citizens' wishes to avoid negative consequences. Accountability can still be achieved even if citizens are not perfectly knowledgeable about their representatives' actions; as long as representatives believe that they will be held accountable by citizens, they will still be motivated to act in accordance with the citizens' interests.
Electoral accountability.
Electoral accountability refers to citizens using their vote to sanction or reward politicians.
Some researchers have considered accountability using formal theory, which makes assumptions about the state of the world to draw larger conclusions. Voters can hold representatives accountable through the process of sanctioning—voting the incumbent out of office in response to poor performance. While politicians face a decrease in vote share as a result of poor performance, they are less likely to see an increase in vote share for good performance. Selection—voters choosing candidates based on who will best represent their interests—is another method by which voters hold their representatives accountable. These methods of accountability can occur simultaneously, with voters holding representatives accountable using both sanctioning and selection. These conclusions rely on the assumption that voters do not observe the policy implemented by the incumbent, but do know their own welfare.
Some factors make it harder for voters to sanction incumbents. When politicians do not have control over outcomes, it becomes harder to hold them accountable. Additionally, when organizations are unable to monitor elections and provide information to voters, then voters struggle to sanction the incumbent. When voters are better informed about the incumbent's performance, the incumbent is more vulnerable to voter sanctioning. Furthermore, when incumbents face sanctioning, challengers are more likely to enter the race.
While elections provide a mechanism which can theoretically increase government accountability to citizens, they may instead lead to less egalitarian policy outcomes, because those who hold the government accountable tend to be from wealthier segments of society. For example, a study of elected versus appointed property assessors in the state of New York shows that the election of property assessors leads to policies that severely undertax wealthier homes relative to poorer homes.
Studies on political accountability have emphasized the key role of elections in promoting accountability in democratic settings. It is through elections that citizens hold governments accountable for past performance. 
Electoral manipulation.
The role of elections in fostering accountability is often undermined by electoral manipulation and fraud. By preventing citizens from removing leaders through elections based on their performance in office, electoral manipulation breaks down accountability and may undercut the consolidation of democratic institutions.
Electoral manipulation is not rare; some estimates are that in the 1990s and 2000s, up to one fourth of elections suffered some form of substantial manipulation. This includes a large array of pre-election and election-day tactics, such as outlawing rival parties and candidates, employing violence and intimidation, and manipulating voter registration and vote count. Some efforts to improve accountability by preventing electoral manipulation and fraud have obtained a certain measure of success, such as using cell phone applications for monitoring and disseminating polling station results and employing domestic or international election observers. However, governments may simply alter the type of manipulation or where it occurs in order to deceive observers and monitoring agencies.
Governments, politicians, and political parties are more likely to resort to electoral manipulation and fraud when they believe they might be removed from office and when they face few institutional constraints to their power. Low political competition has also been linked to some forms of manipulation, such as abolishing presidential term limits. Well-connected candidates are more likely to resort to vote count fraud. Governments may engage in electoral manipulation not only to obtain victory at a given election or to remain in office longer, but also for post-election reasons, such as reducing the strength of the opposition or increasing their own bargaining power in the subsequent period.
Administrative.
Public goods.
Politicians may be incentivized to provide public goods as a means of accountability. The ability of voters to attribute the credit and blame of outcomes also determines the extent of public goods provision. Research suggests that public goods provision being able to attribute outcomes to politicians as opposed to civil servants. This attribution can be enhanced by more short-run and visible inputs and outcomes such as famine relief or access to drinking water, whereas lower-visibility issues such as sanitation and education may be more difficult to attribute credit for and thus less likely to provide for.
Another condition determining how voters use the provision of public goods to hold leaders accountable is whether the prioritization of public goods is determined either directly via vote or delegated to a governing body. An experiment in New Mexico regarding proposed spending during the state's 2008 special summer legislative session provides evidence that legislators update their positions when learning about voters' policy preferences, indicating that a representative democracy can increase accountability when politicians learn about voters' preferences. A 2016 experiment in Afghanistan regarding rural development projects, however, finds that when voters directly prioritize their preferences at the ballot box, they perceive the quality of local government to be higher than when a governing committee prioritizes development projects. These contrasting outcomes highlight a debate between trustees and delegates, though the lack of objective superior outcomes in projects decided by vote as opposed to committee in the Afghanistan experiment indicate neither is superior to the other in determining which public goods should be given priority.
Other research indicates that voters use elections to hold politicians accountable for the provision of public goods. In India, rural areas are charged a flat rate for electricity, but in the province of Uttar Pradesh, line loss—electricity that is consumed but not billed—is significantly higher in election years than non-election years, and increases in line loss reliably predict electoral gains. Voters rewarded incumbent politicians with a 12% increase in party seats in response to a 10% increase of unbilled electricity, in 2007 elections. In Ghana, the improvement of road conditions is linked to an increasing vote share for incumbent parties. Both of these research outcomes hinge on voters being able to attribute the service of public goods to politicians.
Politicians may also have incentives to respond to pressure for public goods provision in electoral autocracies. There is evidence that as autocratic governments lose seats in their party's legislatures, they respond by increasing spending on public goods such as education, healthcare, and pensions. There is further evidence suggesting higher quality of life, civil liberties, and human development in electoral autocracies, lending credence to the theory that autocratic rulers use elections as a bellwether against popular discontent and citizen opposition, and in turn increase public goods provision to dampen the grievances of disgruntled citizens, even in non-democracies.
While the introduction of elections is generally thought to improve public goods provision, in some cases, researchers have shown that it may reduce its quality. For example, the introduction of direct elections for local district office in Indonesia resulted in political interference in the hiring process for bureaucrats in the public education sector, reducing the quality of education provision; politicians were incentivized to dole out patronage positions in the education sector, especially in election years, and where such positions were added, student test scores were lower.
Non-electoral.
Governments are held accountable if citizens can punish or reward the government to influence it to pursue their best interests. While scholars who study democratic theory emphasize the role of elections in ensuring accountability, another strand of scholars investigates non-electoral forms of accountability in democracies and non-democracies and the conditions that make unelected leaders represent the interests of the general public.
Political protests.
Political changes after protests can be the result of the protests "per se", or symptoms of shifts in political preferences underneath the observable phenomena of the protests. One study of the Tea Party movement in the United States has shown that protests "per se" have an impact on political change.
Other scholars studied the effect of protests on political changes in developing countries. Mass protests instigated by economic hardship and political repression occurred in 16 sub-Saharan African countries, and 21 governments in the region implemented significant political reforms, such as the adoption of multi-party elections. Authoritarian regimes in Africa distorted the market and reduced the cost of farm produce in favor of urban workers at the cost of rural farmers in the 1980s to prevent urban unrest, which is more visible and easier to mobilize than rural protests.
Selectorates.
Belsky "et al." point out that whereas, under more democratic governance, accountability is built into the institution of the state by a habit of regular elections, accountability in autocratic regimes relies on a selectorate—a group that legitimizes or delegitimizes the autocrat's powers according to selectorate theory. Selectorates are those on whom a leader depends in order to hold onto power, and those who have the ability to depose a leader. When a selectorate's hold on power is not overly dependent on the leader in office, selectorates can remove poorly performing leaders, and this accountability by selectorates renders it possible for autocracies to perform better for the benefit of all. Beyond that, institutions can act as credible restraints on autocracy as well.
Civil societies.
In democracies, voluntary associations, interest groups, and associational activity can improve the performance of the government. One study showed that civil society organizations such as NGOs can increase the performance of local government according to the central government's standards by monitoring and disclosing information about local government performance in authoritarian regimes like China. Solidarity groups in rural China, in which members share moral obligations and interests, can hold local officials accountable as well when (i) the solidarity group encompasses everyone under the local government's jurisdiction, and (ii) local officials are embedded