Accountable autonomy is a concept by political scientist Archon Fung that denotes a particular institutional design of administrative and democratic organization which tries to get the most out of civic participation and deliberation. Accountable autonomy addresses the defects of decentralization and localism, such as group-think, inequality and parochialism, through hybrid arrangements that allocate power, function and responsibility between central authorities and local bodies. The terms accountable and autonomy might seem at odds with each other. Autonomy means both independence from central power, as the capacity to accomplish own ends. The second sense is what Fung stresses upon: ‘a conception of centralized action that counter-intuitively bolsters local capability without improperly and destructively encroaching upon it.’
Two examples of this agency structure are Chicago's Alternative Policing Strategy and Local School Councils.
Read more about Accountable Autonomy: Design of Accountable Autonomy
Famous quotes containing the words accountable and/or autonomy:
“I sometimes wonder whether, in the still, sleepless hours of the night, the consciences of ... professional gossips do not stalk them. I myself believe in a final reckoning, when we shall be held accountable for our misdeeds. Do they? If so, they have cause to worry over many scoops that brought them a day’s dubious laurels and perhaps destroyed someone’s peace forever.”
—Mary Pickford (1893–1979)
“If the Russians have gone too far in subjecting the child and his peer group to conformity to a single set of values imposed by the adult society, perhaps we have reached the point of diminishing returns in allowing excessive autonomy and in failing to utilize the constructive potential of the peer group in developing social responsibility and consideration for others.”
—Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)