Designing an Accountability Index: A Case Study of South America Central Governments

Abstract The aim of this paper is to evaluate accountability using a newly constructed multivariate accountability index based on the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), as well as on the accessibility of government disclosure for each country in the South America context. That will allow to analyse and compare the accountability disclosure issues among the South American countries. This study uses the statistical dimensional structure of data to identify the number of (dominant) dimensions. The findings were eight dimensions defined as Environmental, Expenditure, Social, Strategic, Economic, Information, Macroeconomic and Organizational perspectives. Scores are recorded for the twelve countries in South America that are classified accordingly. The contributions of this research represent an advance in the theoretical and empirical framework by creating an accountability index that takes into account the principles of good governance to improve the South America Central Governments’ transparency performance. This index could be used both by academics and practitioners to classify countries and their web site accountability.