Transparency, Performance, and Accountability: Handling Disagreements among Institutional Principals

Abstract

Transparency has been assumed to enhance government accountability. Recent studies, however, have suggested complex relationships between transparency and various accountability mechanisms. By conducting new empirical analyses on the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) during the Bush Administration, we found that both management transparency and result transparency led to increased presidential budget allocations only when transparency contributed to higher performance ratings. Result transparency, but not management transparency, directly affected congressional budget allocations. Result transparency also reduced the differences between presidential and congressional budget allocations; this effect was larger for discretionary programs. During divided governments, management transparency also contributed to reducing the differences between presidential and congressional budget allocations. These findings show the importance of institutionalizing both transparency and performance evaluation at the same time as a way to improve accountability and reduce conflicts between institutional principals responsible for holding government agencies accountable.