Government Accountability: Position, Dimensions and Pre-conditions

Accountability as an element of good governance has long been in the core attention of Public Law and Politics scholars. Despite this, the concept of accountability and its dimensions are ambiguous, and sometimes, there exists confusion. This article tries to achieve the concept of accountability through functional democracy according to its object(i.e. allocating power). According to this definition, accountability is a two -dimensional concept and consists of “Answerability” and “Enforcement”: which achieving each of them needs two preconditions: transparency and rule of law. Furthermore, even if one or two of them are missing, we may still legitimately speak of acts of accountability.
Irrefutably clarifying the position of accountability in democracy and good governance can be useful for understanding this concept. Accountability is a concept with the emergence of which the concerns about limiting, control, monitoring and balancing the power can be fulfilled.