Accountability and Transparency: Siamese Twins, Matching Parts, Awkward Couple?

This paper contrasts three possible ways of thinking about the relationship between accountability and transparency as principles of governance: as ‘Siamese twins’, not really distinguishable; as ‘matching parts’ that are separable but nevertheless complement one another smoothly to produce good governance; and as ‘awkward couple’, involving elements that are potentially or actually in tension with one another. It then identifies three possible ways in which we could establish the accuracy or plausibility of each of those three characterisations. One is a search for true essences that would separate true from spurious meanings. A second is to dimensionalise each of the concepts and explore the matrix of connectivity between the dimensions. A third is to explore the multiple frames for thinking about accountability and transparency that come from the neo-Durkheimian analysis of the limited number of elementary ways of life developed by the late Mary Douglas and her followers. The analytic utility of this approach is that it allows us to identify four different ways of thinking about transparency and accountability and the links between them.