The Meaning and Purposes of Transnational Accountability

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It is now commonplace for the language of accountability to be invoked in debates about transnational power and governance. Yet there is little agreement on whether ‘accountability’ takes an analogous form between national and transnational governance domains, and thus whether transnational extension of the concept overstretches the term – blurring or distorting our analysis of meanings and purposes of accountability. This paper suggests that although the same core meaning of accountability is equally relevant at transnational as at national scale, there are some notable differences in how questions about accountability ‘for what’, ‘to whom’ and ‘through what means’ are answered in a transnational governance setting. Nonetheless, analysing transnational accountability can enhance our understanding of important but often overlooked purposes of accountability – focusing our attention on accountability not only as a means of legitimizing and stabilizing public governance processes, but also as a vehicle for political contestation and institutional change.