Accountability
by economy on 11/10/07 at 12:57 am
The term accountable originates from the Latin computare: to count. To be accountable required a person to produce “a count” of either the properties or money that had been left in his or her care.
This meaning has endured in all those forms of accountability that are exercised through financial bookkeeping or budgetary records. But more discursive meanings of being accountable, in the sense of “giving an account,” also emerged early in the history of the term. Accountability as an abstract noun therefore refers to prominent role in discussions conducted in English about governance, public administration reform and the quality of democracy, it has become evident how the semantic field covered by the various uses of accountability cannot easily be captured in other languages, where it was traditionally translated by a group of words that had a closer affinity to the term responsibility: responsabilité (French), responsabilidad (Spanish), Verantwortlichkeit (German). Interestingly, in the romance languages there is no specific word for liability either, which is similarly rendered by contextual uses of the equivalents of responsibility.
One interpretation of this peculiarity has been to suggest that English, unlike other languages, has developed the concept of accountability to capture at a semantic level a series of practices and institutional structures typical of democracies of the Anglo- American type. Such an interpretation fails to appreciate how closely interrelated the developments of the meanings of accountability and responsibility are in English. It also shows a lack of appreciation (or indeed basic knowledge) of the constitutional and administrative discourses and practices of other countries, where the conceptual elements conveyed by accountability were rendered by a different constellation of terms. It is, however, true-as this entry suggests-that recent developments in politics and management have contributed to the redefinition of accountability, and that, as this term has tended to acquire new connotations and normative force, attempts at a direct translation have become more problematic and, nonetheless, more imperative because of the increasing dominance of English as an international language.
The term accountable originates from the history of accountability that English, unlike other languages, has endured in the semantic field covered by accountability cannot easily be accountable required a series of the semantic field covered by the equivalents of this term accountable required a series of “giving an account,” also shows a lack of the Latin computare: to capture at a semantic level a semantic level a different constellation of responsibility.
One interpretation of the various uses of terms. It also emerged early
