Dissertation

Taking centre stage: understanding how EU account-holders enact their accountability roles

What drives the behaviour of accountability forums?

Author: Benjamin Leidorf-Tidå
Date: 06 February 2024
Links: Full text in Scholarly Publications Leiden University

Accountability is a cornerstone of democratic governance. But with the emergence of increasingly complex multi-level and multi-stakeholder governance structures, and an increasing amount of delegation of public powers and tasks to both public and private non-majoritarian bodies, safeguarding public accountability has however become an increasingly complicated endeavour. This is not the least to be seen in the EU, where discussions about the EU's democratic deficit often centre around questions of accountability, with the accountability of non-majoritarian and (semi-)independent EU agencies being of particular concern.

This dissertation focuses on how institutional EU account-holders execute their account-holding roles, in particular vis-à-vis EU agencies. Findings indicate that EU account-holders, within the constraints of their specific account-holding roles, are visibility-seeking organisations looking to take centre stage. This has important democratic accountability implications: Does the visibility-seeking behaviour of account-holders lead to low(er)-visibility agencies and issues escaping democratic scrutiny, or does it push account-holders towards going above and beyond their formal account-holding obligations.