Public sector actors are continuously being held accountable by a multitude of accountability forums. Responding to the forums’ demands often requires prioritizing between them. This study investigates how those prioritization choices are made. Drawing on two competing perspectives: the classical view of accountability as “answerability” which emphasizes hierarchy and control, and the modern interpretation of accountability as “management of expectations” which highlights the strategic management of relations, we identify four factors whose influence on prioritization choices we investigate. Using a conjoint experiment, we investigate the prioritization decisions of civil servants in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. We find that the threat of sanction, which is central in the answerability perspective, is consistently the most important driver of prioritization decisions. The management of expectations, focusing on forum expertise and relationships with the accountability forums, appears to be largely context dependent and helps to explain additional, more fine-grained variations.

中文翻译：

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通过设定优先级管理多重责任：来自跨国联合实验的证据

众多问责论坛不断追究公共部门行为者的责任。响应论坛的需求通常需要在它们之间进行优先排序。本研究调查了这些优先级选择是如何做出的。借鉴两个相互竞争的观点：将问责制视为强调等级和控制的“可回答性”的经典观点，以及将问责制作为强调关系战略管理的“期望管理”的现代解释，我们确定了影响优先级选择的四个因素我们调查。通过联合实验，我们调查了英国和荷兰公务员的优先级决定。我们发现制裁的威胁，这是可回答性观点的核心，始终是优先级决策的最重要驱动因素。期望管理，侧重于论坛专业知识和与问责论坛的关系，似乎在很大程度上取决于上下文，有助于解释更多、更细粒度的变化。