Citizen-driven Model of Ensuring Administrative Accountability and Improved Public Services in Africa: Examining the Increasing Role of Informal Networks in Uganda

摘要

Modern Public Management places much emphasis on Administrative accountability in improving the delivery of public services offered by developing countries. Administrative accountability; perceived as a state of affairs where public servants serve a public purpose in a manner that conforms both to the law and to the will of the public as interpreted by its elected representatives. The forms of administrative accountability vary ranging from formal to informal. In this paper, we examine the increasing role of informal networks that work which seem to seriously affect the delivery of public services and threaten the citizen-driven model of governance. The means of enforcing accountability are both internal and external, exercised through such mechanisms as executive control, budgets, rule-making procedures implemented by various central and local government agencies. Recent evidence in Uganda suggests that such processes are often highly imbued by enormous informalities of the administrators as well as the agencies and individuals charged with enforcing administrative accountability. Confusion of responsibility, and the excessive growth of the issues for which the government is responsible are but a few illustrations of the shortcomings to realize desirable administrative accountability. As such, the complexity of society and the emerging multifaceted indispensable social networks have disproportionately paralleled the formal approaches of ensuring administrative accountability. The paper addresses the question: can administrative accountability flourish in a country where there is increased reliance on informal practices that violate prescribed rules and procedures?