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Accountability and Affective Styles in Administrative Reporting: The Case of UNRWA, 1951–2020
Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory ( IF 6.160 ) Pub Date : 2021-07-01 , DOI: 10.1093/jopart/muab024
Ronny Patz 1 , Svanhildur Thorvaldsdottir 2 , Klaus H Goetz 3
Affiliation  

This contribution theorizes on the emergence of affective styles in the accountability reporting of public agencies. Under conditions of multiple accountability towards heterogeneous stakeholders, public agencies are expected to make increased use of sentiment in their reporting. Agencies’ differentiated modulation of positive and negative sentiment results in four ideal-typical affective styles: technocratic, political, alarming, and self-praising. The plausibility of this framework is demonstrated for the case of a major international public agency, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which serves several million Palestine refugees. We conduct a dictionary-based sentiment analysis of UNRWA annual reports published between 1951 and 2020, a corpus of 1.47 million words. Additional evidence from interviews with UNRWA officials and diplomats is also considered. Over time, the agency’s use of sentiment has increased in response to diversifying stakeholders and its affective style of reporting has changed repeatedly. Contrary to established theoretical expectations, multiple accountability not only increases positive reporting and self-praise. Rather, with increasing levels of negativity, the alarming and political styles of communication have played a much stronger role. These findings demonstrate that agencies’ chief goal in accountability reporting is not simply to elicit positive assessments from their respective accountability forums through self-praising language. Agencies may also aim to achieve “negativity congruence” with accountability forums by increasing negative sentiment, thus compelling stakeholders to acknowledge the operational challenges agencies face.

中文翻译:

行政报告中的问责制和情感风格:近东救济工程处案例,1951-2020 年

这一贡献理论化了公共机构问责报告中情感风格的出现。在对不同的利益相关者承担多重责任的情况下,预计公共机构将在其报告中更多地使用情绪。机构对正面和负面情绪的差异化调制导致四种理想典型的情感风格:技术官僚、政治、警告和自我赞美。一个主要的国际公共机构联合国近东巴勒斯坦难民救济和工程处(近东救济工程处)的案例证明了这一框架的合理性,该机构为数百万巴勒斯坦难民提供服务。我们对近东救济工程处 1951 年至 2020 年间发布的年度报告(包含 147 万字的语料库)进行基于字典的情绪分析。还考虑了与近东救济工程处官员和外交官面谈的其他证据。随着时间的推移,该机构对情绪的使用有所增加,以应对利益相关者的多样化,其报告的情感风格也一再发生变化。与既定的理论预期相反,多重问责制不仅增加了积极的报告和自我表扬。相反,随着消极情绪的增加,令人担忧的政治风格的沟通方式发挥了更大的作用。这些调查结果表明,机构在问责制报告中的主要目标不仅仅是通过自我表扬的语言从各自的问责制论坛中获得积极的评估。机构还可以通过增加负面情绪来实现与问责论坛的“负面一致性”,
更新日期:2021-07-01
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