Retailing Governance? The Rise of Accountability Communities

'Who' is accountable to 'whom' becomes a crucial issue in new modes of governance. The thrust of a substantial literature on regulatory governance at the global or national level is towards a search for substitute mechanisms of accountability and monitoring, operating outside formal governmental institutions. And here, what I term 'accountability communities' perform a crucial function. Accountability communities are complex and composed of public and/or private organisations and they: a) perform legislative, monitoring and compliance activities in specific functionally based regulatory regimes within and beyond, national boundaries; b) operate through institutional forms such as deliberative forums, markets, or use of network mechanisms; and c) possess particular understandings of accountability that binds various actors together.