CHÁ QUENTE #204

Em Janeiro deste ano definia entre as prioridades para o biénio 2006-2007:
4- Lembrar os agentes políticos regionais para a obrigação de contribuírem activamente para uma ética pública democrática através da transparência e responsabilização dos seus comportamentos, do combate frontal a qualquer forma, ou promoção, de mesquinhez política ou bairrismo serôdio, do incentivo aos poderes públicos regionais para a adopção e criação de medidas e estruturas horizontais independentes de avaliação, responsabilização e regulação das suas políticas;
Porquê? Comecemos pelo princípio:
Power and accountability
Citizens grant sweeping powers to the political executive: to tax, to spend and to make and enforce policies and laws. In return, citizens demand accountability. They expect the government to explain and justify publicly the way it uses its power, and to take prompt corrective action when things go wrong. Accountability, viewed in this way, serves two purposes. Its political purpose is to check the might of the political executive — it is a mechanism for minimizing abuse of power. Its operational purpose is to help ensure that governments operate effectively and efficiently.

Horizontal versus vertical accountability
In a well functioning State, therefore, the government is subjected to accountability that is both imposed upon it from outside by citizens, and accountability that it imposes upon itself through public institutions empowered to restrain the political executive. Theorists refer to this important distinction as “vertical” accountability (by the State to citizens) versus “horizontal” accountability (by the State to its own public institutions of accountability).

When Accountability Fails: A Framework for Diagnosis and Action, Mark Schacter

A OCDE traz-nos umas Approaches and the Role of Accountability :
Roles of different actors, e.g. government organisations, ministers, parliament, the public and independent organisations (Ombudsman, Audit Offices, Courts).
Importance of the traditional accountability chain: government organisations - ministers - parliament - the public, versus other approaches e.g. performance based accountability; direct accountability: government organisations - parliament; government organisations - public.

A Índia traz-nos outras experiências:
Horizontal accountability is in theory ensured by a range of state institutions and specific agencies. Political accountability is assured through the operation of a legislature where there is an effective opposition and well-functioning oversight committees. Fiscal accountability is more precisely defined than other types of accountability, as it is simply based on formal financial accounting for the use of public resources. Administrative accountability can be more loosely institutionalised than other forms of accountability, and tends to be the arena least well insulated from social and political pressures.
In a formal sense, it inheres in the reporting relationship between the bureaucracy and its political superiors (ministers and the legislature), and in the internal reporting relationships between different levels and functional arenas of the bureaucracy – relationships that can be undermined easily by collusion among officials.
In both the North and South, shortcomings in conventional accountability systems – secrecy in auditing, ineffective policy reviews in legislatures, the electorate’s difficulty in sending strong signals to decision-makers between elections, excessive delays in courts, and inadequate sanctions for failure to apply administrative rules or respect standards – have created pressure for betterchannels for vertical information flows and stronger accountability relationships between state agents and citizens.
Hybrid Forms of Accountability Citizen Engagement in Institutions of Public-Sector Oversight in India, Anne Marie Goetz & Rob Jenkins

Olhemos então as tradicionais INSTITUTIONS OF VERTICAL ACCOUNTABILITY :
ELECTORAL ACCOUNTABILITY. One vital, though imperfect, means for controlling corruption is a competitive and transparent electoral process…If vertical accountability is to be real, then an instrument of horizontal accountability is needed in the form of an independent, electoral commission capable of displeasing the ruling party. This institution also needs resources—human, technical, and financial—and a lot of training.
AN INDEPENDENT MASS MEDIA. Transparency, virtually by definition, requires free and open flows of information. Without a free and pluralistic press, transparency is impossible. For much of the developing and postcommunist world, it will take many years to develop the needed levels of press pluralism, capacity, and responsibility, even if a climate of freedom exists.
NONGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS. A variety of civic associations—bar associations, women’s organizations, student groups, religious bodies, election monitoring and human rights groups—may form coalitions to lobby for constitutional changes to improve governance, while also working to monitor the conduct of public officials.
Institutions of Accountability, Larry Diamond

É por isso que, fazendo fé nas palavras de Guillermo O'Donnell, "...democracy should not be analyzed only at the level of the political regime, but that it must also be studied in relation to the state (especially the "state-qua-legal system), and to certain aspects of the overall social context. In this line of argument, democracy changes from an event, the electoral process, to an enduring regime, backed by a legal system where legally bounded and morally grounded political and civil citizenship are truly omnipresent..." (para os mais interessados aqui fica parte do The Quality Of Democracy: Theory And Applications )

Ainda assim, no plano da horizontal accountability e dos formalismos institucionais democráticos, nem tudo pode correr bem. Vejamos uma laboriosa abordagem de Argelina Cheibub Figueiredo às Instituições e Política no Controle do Executivo, trabalhando sobre "...os efeitos de um Executivo institucionalmente forte e de um processo decisório centralizado sobre o desempenho do Congresso em seu papel de agência horizontal de controle do Executivo. Discutirei, primeiro, como as variáveis institucionais e políticas interagem levando o Congresso a ativar os mecanismos de fiscalização existentes e, segundo, as condições que permitem o sucesso de sua ação. Define-se sucesso aqui, tanto como a imposição de sanções em casos de omissão, comportamento impróprio e corrupção do Executivo, quanto como a obtenção de mudanças no curso de políticas públicas."

Entre nós, em menos de 15 dias, assistimos a duas situações que nos devem, no mínimo, fazer pensar sobre os instrumentos de accountability, a sua implementação, aceitação institucional e social e respectiva eficácia, tais foram:
no campo da horizontal accoutability:
O ministro da Economia autorizou ontem a compra de 40% da Au- to-Estradas do Atlântico (AEA) pela Brisa. O processo de aquisição tinha sido anteriormente chumbado pela Autoridade da Concorrência (AdC). É a primeira vez que o Governo contraria uma decisão da AdC
no campo da vertical accoutability:
O ministro da Saúde acusou hoje o Observatório dos Sistemas de Saúde de falta de rigor e de credibilidade, numa reacção ao relatório daquela entidade sobre a acção governativa no último ano.
Porque nem tudo são rosas olhemos uma das conclusões de Anne Marie Goetz & Rob Jenkins no paper supra citado: "...The first is the tendency for the state to resist citizen poaching on its exclusive oversight domain. An increasingly popular means of reasserting state control over the accountability agenda is for the state to preempt the emergence of new forms of citizen engagement with oversight institutions by introducing initiatives of its own to engage citizens in evaluating policy. New hybrid forms of accountability thus face stiff competition from the state itself. State elites, motivated by a desire to justify their evasion and emasculation of intra-state (horizontal) mechanisms of accountability, argue that they rely instead on modified forms of (vertical) accountability that link the state directly to citizens and their groups. These are typically unproductive means of obtaining citizen ‘input’ or else forums for citizen ‘complaint’...Such efforts, which include citizens’ juries, consultative forums, focus groups, and citizens’ charters, inevitably lack any decision-making power...", para bom entendedor qualquer língua serve...