Vertical Accountability - A Normative Principle of Democracy

Vertical accountability is a normative democratic principle. Starting from the base statement that this dimension “is the obligation of elected political leaders to answer for their political decisions”, we introduce a necessary requirement for examining the quality of democracy.

We can start with the question “why is vertical accountability a necessary principle of democracy?” For a democracy to be democratic there is an element of citizen involvement. While this may be seen, exercised and measured using a variety of metrics, vertical accountability sees its ultimate exercise when governments are subjected to periodic citizen sanction or reward i.e. they are held accountable by the population being governed.

Two broad mechanisms signal the application of vertical accountability: long term through the ballot box and short term through signalling satisfaction with government actions. The existence of other political parties is a driver of vertical accountability. This could be considered by itself but fits equally well as a means to signal levels of satisfaction. Without legitimate opposition, the driver for vertical accountability is removed. These features are signals that vertical accountability exists.

How you would measure vertical accountability is a matter of debate approachable with a range of variables and ignoring or taking into account the related dimensions of horizontal accountability and diagonal accountability. This does not detract from the importance of holding vertical accountability as a necessary principle or dimension of democracy.

To set the normative structure, the existence, or not, of vertical accountability is a marker of democracy which serves as a weight towards judging the quality of democracy. Removing vertical accountability, in this model, reduces the strength of democracy but does not add anything to explorations of the mechanisms of vertical accountability.