Thomas Schillemans
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 384564 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Thomas Schillemans |
| PRENOMES | Thomas |
| SOBRENOME | Schillemans |
| ASSINATURA | SCHILLEMANS T |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Utrecht University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2378-4998 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 32 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 513 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 31 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2008 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 10 |
Advancing Accountability in Unsettled Times
This introduction argues that accountability scholarship must adapt to “unsettled times” marked by democratic backsliding, transnational governance, and rapid technological change. Whereas earlier research largely examined accountability in stable institutional contexts, contemporary challenges require rethinking its normative foundations, behavioral dynamics, and institutional forms. The featured articles address four themes: truthfulness as a d…
Improving non-executive directors’ judgement quality through information provision
This study examines how information provision influences judgement quality of non-executive directors in the semipublic sector. Based on insights from behavioural science, hypotheses were developed and tested using a mixed-methods design, combining an experiment (N = 101) and group interviews (N = 34). The experiment with non-executive directors provides evidence for a causal relationship between information diversity and integrative complexity i…
Damage control
This paper examines how communication strategies shape citizen trust in regulatory agencies following different types of regulatory failure. Using a survey experiment on a representative sample of 1568 Danish citizens, it tests the effects of five communicative strategies. The results indicate that the effectiveness of communicative responses in promoting citizen trust is highly context-sensitive. Overall, the results support earlier studies indi…
Aligning the steering of governmental organizations a comparative mixed-methods study in Denmark using stewardship theory
Stewardship theory offers considerable promise for strengthening trust between governments and organizations implementing policy. Recent studies show stewardship is partially applicable to the steering of public organizations yet it is not clear under what conditions. This study asserts that the steering of governmental organizations needs to be aligned with preferences and conditions of organizations, combining principal-agent and stewardship th…
Making nonpunitive accountability matter
Punitive measures (sanctions) are central to accountability. Their use is however costly as they harm relationships. Prior research shows that punitive measures often remain unused. Public sector actors further operate in informal accountability settings where punitive measures are absent. Additionally, doctrines such as New Public Governance prioritize informal networks above hierarchy and punitive measures. Against this background, we study whe…
Learning accountable governance
Current challenges to sustaining public support for health data research have directed attention to the governance of data-intensive health research networks. Accountability is hailed as an important element of trustworthy governance frameworks for data-intensive health research networks. Yet the extent to which adequate accountability regimes in data-intensive health research networks are currently realized is questionable. Current governance of…
Public sector accountability styles in Europe comparing accountability and control of agencies in the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland and the UK
This paper develops and applies the concept of accountability styles for analyzing and comparing accountability practices in different countries. This is relevant as there is considerable scholarship on public sector accountability but only very few comparative studies. Extant studies have shown that national styles of accountability are both marked by convergence as well as the resilience of national differences. The concept of accountability st…
Enacting Accountability Under Populist Pressures
While populism challenges the pluralism and technocratic expertise on which public bureaucracies are based, extant scholarship has overlooked its effects on accountability processes. In particular, it neglects the impact of anti-elite rhetoric, characterized by what can be regarded as “emotionalized blame attribution,” on the thinking and behavior of accountability actors. Responding to this gap, this article examines the impact of this distincti…
A validated measurement for felt relational accountability in the public sector
The effectiveness of formal public sector accountability mechanisms is largely predicated on the individual perception of accountability. In particular, the individual’s experienced relationship to account holders is key in understanding the effects of formal accountability mechanisms. This article develops a measurement instrument for felt relational accountability in public administration. We measure perceived legitimacy and expertise of the ac…
Conflictual Accountability
In contemporary public governance, leaders of public organizations are faced with multiple, and oftentimes conflictual, accountability claims. Drawing upon a survey of CEO’s of agencies in seven countries, we explore whether and how conflictual accountability regimes relate to strategic behaviors by agency-CEO’s and their political principals. The presence of conflictual accountability is experienced as a major challenge and is associated with im…
Management of Multiple Accountabilities Through Setting Priorities
Public sector actors are continuously being held accountable by a multitude of accountability forums. Responding to the forums’ demands often requires prioritizing between them. This study investigates how those prioritization choices are made. Drawing on two competing perspectives: the classical view of accountability as “answerability” which emphasizes hierarchy and control, and the modern interpretation of accountability as “management of expe…
Dissecting multiple accountabilities
The necessity for public sector actors to manage multiple accountabilities in their work has been linked to a number of problems and failures, yet we lack an understanding of how multiple accountabilities affect the decision‐making behavior of civil servants. Here we argue that the main issue is not only the existence of multiple forums as such but the presence of conflicting demands between multiple forums or within a single forum. Drawing on so…
Toward a Public Administration Theory of Felt Accountability
The literature on public accountability is extensive but overwhelmingly focuses on accountability of organizations. Yet, accountability mechanisms can function properly only when individuals believe that they will be held accountable in the future. This article bridges that gap by translating and extending the psychological concept of “felt accountability” to the public administration scholarship. The particular context of accountability in publi…
Understanding Felt Accountability
The literature on autonomous public agencies often adopts a top‐down approach, focusing on the means with which those agencies can be steered and controlled. This article opens up the black box of the agencies and zooms in on their CEO's and their perceptions of hierarchical accountability. The article focuses on felt accountability, denoting the manager's (a) expectation to have to explain substantive decisions to a parent department perceived t…
Simple nudges that are not so easy
In this paper, we critically review three assumptions that govern the debate on the legitimacy of nudging interventions as a policy instrument: (1) nudges may violate autonomous decision-making; (2) nudges lend themselves to easy implementation in public policy; and (3) nudges are a simple and effective mean for steering individual choice in the right direction. Our analysis reveals that none of these assumptions are supported by recent studies e…
Mounting media pressure
Decision-making in public bureaucracies should be guided by rules and formal procedures, securing predictability, impartiality and fair decisions. Studies show that public bureaucracies are highly mediatised – but knowledge about media impact on political outcomes is scarce. In this article, we study if, how and why media affect agendas, resource allocation and case decisions within public bureaucracies. Empirically, we apply a mixed method appro…
Why do civil servants experience media-stress differently and what can be done about it
Pressure from the media affects the daily work of bureaucrats and induces ‘media stress’, with potentially critical effects on the quality of public policy. This article analyses how bureaucrats’ daily work has been adapted to the media (‘mediatised’) and which groups of bureaucrats experience the most media-stress. Reporting the results of an original and large-scale survey (N=4,655) this article demonstrates that levels of media-stress vary amo…
Governance, accountability and the role of public sector boards
For many public organisations, boards are the primary accountability mechanisms for management. Boards have a multipronged portfolio: strategic advice, employment, external linkage and critical scrutiny. The literature casts serious doubts about their capabilities. There is ‘managerial dominance’. This article reviews existing studies on public sector boards and identifies important reasons why boards are likely to fail as accountability mechanis…
Media and public accountability
The role of the media in public accountability has often been discussed. This is especially the case for public sector organisations, whose accountability relations have changed in the shift from government to governance. In this paper, we develop a typology of the ways mass media are involved in public accountability processes. Media can stimulate actors to reflect on their behaviour, trigger formal accountability by reporting on the behaviour o…
Fighting or fumbling with the beast? The mediatisation of public sector agencies in Australia and the Netherlands
Public agencies are the objects of a large share of the daily news and devote substantial resources to media management and monitoring. This paper analyses how public agencies have adapted their internal structures and processes in order to meet the demands from their media environment. To this end, an analytical framework for the analysis of organisational mediatisation – the adaptation of internal structures and processes to external media dema…
Entangling and disentangling governance and the media
Determinants of Organizational Mediatization
This article seeks to explain why the media affect some governmental agencies more than others. We develop a measuring instrument for the mediatization of agencies; gauging how they adapt to the media. We analyse the effects of six potential explanations of mediatization: media pressure, organizational size and task, salience, geographic location, and management structure. The analysis is based on a comprehensive quantitative contents analysis of…
Predicting Public Sector Accountability
Principal-agent theory has been the dominant theory at the heart of public sector accountability research. The notion of the potentially drifting agent-such as independent public agencies, opaque transnational institutions, or recalcitrant street-level bureaucrats-has been the guiding paradigm in empirical accountability research. The aim of this article is first of all to signal the limits of principal-agent theory as a predictive model of how a…
The Ontological Challenge
This chapter examines the emergence of accountability as a culturally significant concept that both reflects and shapes changes taking place in our understanding of contemporary governance. The author explores how its emergence as a “cultural keyword” has transformed both the form and function of accountability, and the challenges this development poses for the study of accountable governance.
Public Accountability
Does Public Accountability Work? An Assessment Tool
In recent years, there has been a drive to strengthen existing public accountability arrangements and to design new ones. This prompts the question whether accountability arrangements actually work. In the existing literature, both accountability ‘deficits’ and ‘overloads’ are alleged to exist. However, owing to the lack of a cogent yardstick, the debate tends to be impressionistic and event‐driven. In this article we develop an instrument for sy…
Predicting Public Sector Accountability
Principal-agent theory has been the dominant theory at the heart of public sector accountability research. The notion of the potentially drifting agent-such as independent public agencies, opaque transnational institutions, or recalcitrant street-level bureaucrats-has been the guiding paradigm in empirical accountability research. The aim of this article is first of all to signal the limits of principal-agent theory as a predictive model of how a…
The Accountability Cube
Accountability is one of the cornerstones of a democratic political system, but remarkably little is known of how it works in practice. Much of the literature focuses either on finding the most appropriate definition or on demonstrating the effect of information asymmetries using game-theoretic arguments. This article aims to go one step further by attempting to map out the intensity of accountability processes. Based on an extensive literature r…
The Hybrid Media System
Media and public accountability
The role of the media in public accountability has often been discussed. This is especially the case for public sector organisations, whose accountability relations have changed in the shift from government to governance. In this paper, we develop a typology of the ways mass media are involved in public accountability processes. Media can stimulate actors to reflect on their behaviour, trigger formal accountability by reporting on the behaviour o…
Management of Multiple Accountabilities Through Setting Priorities
Public sector actors are continuously being held accountable by a multitude of accountability forums. Responding to the forums’ demands often requires prioritizing between them. This study investigates how those prioritization choices are made. Drawing on two competing perspectives: the classical view of accountability as “answerability” which emphasizes hierarchy and control, and the modern interpretation of accountability as “management of expe…
Does Horizontal Accountability Work
This article addresses the accountability deficit of executive agencies. It argues that the acclaimed deficit consists of two elements: the inability of democratic principals to hold autonomous agencies accountable and the insufficiency of hierarchical accountability mechanisms on their own. Horizontal mechanisms for accountability have been developed in which agencies account for their behavior toward stakeholders, boards of commissioners, and p…
Understanding Felt Accountability
The literature on autonomous public agencies often adopts a top‐down approach, focusing on the means with which those agencies can be steered and controlled. This article opens up the black box of the agencies and zooms in on their CEO's and their perceptions of hierarchical accountability. The article focuses on felt accountability, denoting the manager's (a) expectation to have to explain substantive decisions to a parent department perceived t…
Determinants of Organizational Mediatization
This article seeks to explain why the media affect some governmental agencies more than others. We develop a measuring instrument for the mediatization of agencies; gauging how they adapt to the media. We analyse the effects of six potential explanations of mediatization: media pressure, organizational size and task, salience, geographic location, and management structure. The analysis is based on a comprehensive quantitative contents analysis of…
Dissecting multiple accountabilities
The necessity for public sector actors to manage multiple accountabilities in their work has been linked to a number of problems and failures, yet we lack an understanding of how multiple accountabilities affect the decision‐making behavior of civil servants. Here we argue that the main issue is not only the existence of multiple forums as such but the presence of conflicting demands between multiple forums or within a single forum. Drawing on so…
Enacting Accountability Under Populist Pressures
While populism challenges the pluralism and technocratic expertise on which public bureaucracies are based, extant scholarship has overlooked its effects on accountability processes. In particular, it neglects the impact of anti-elite rhetoric, characterized by what can be regarded as “emotionalized blame attribution,” on the thinking and behavior of accountability actors. Responding to this gap, this article examines the impact of this distincti…
Why do civil servants experience media-stress differently and what can be done about it
Pressure from the media affects the daily work of bureaucrats and induces ‘media stress’, with potentially critical effects on the quality of public policy. This article analyses how bureaucrats’ daily work has been adapted to the media (‘mediatised’) and which groups of bureaucrats experience the most media-stress. Reporting the results of an original and large-scale survey (N=4,655) this article demonstrates that levels of media-stress vary amo…
Fighting or fumbling with the beast? The mediatisation of public sector agencies in Australia and the Netherlands
Public agencies are the objects of a large share of the daily news and devote substantial resources to media management and monitoring. This paper analyses how public agencies have adapted their internal structures and processes in order to meet the demands from their media environment. To this end, an analytical framework for the analysis of organisational mediatisation – the adaptation of internal structures and processes to external media dema…
Entangling and disentangling governance and the media
Making nonpunitive accountability matter
Punitive measures (sanctions) are central to accountability. Their use is however costly as they harm relationships. Prior research shows that punitive measures often remain unused. Public sector actors further operate in informal accountability settings where punitive measures are absent. Additionally, doctrines such as New Public Governance prioritize informal networks above hierarchy and punitive measures. Against this background, we study whe…
Public sector accountability styles in Europe comparing accountability and control of agencies in the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland and the UK
This paper develops and applies the concept of accountability styles for analyzing and comparing accountability practices in different countries. This is relevant as there is considerable scholarship on public sector accountability but only very few comparative studies. Extant studies have shown that national styles of accountability are both marked by convergence as well as the resilience of national differences. The concept of accountability st…
Conflictual Accountability
In contemporary public governance, leaders of public organizations are faced with multiple, and oftentimes conflictual, accountability claims. Drawing upon a survey of CEO’s of agencies in seven countries, we explore whether and how conflictual accountability regimes relate to strategic behaviors by agency-CEO’s and their political principals. The presence of conflictual accountability is experienced as a major challenge and is associated with im…
Governance, accountability and the role of public sector boards
For many public organisations, boards are the primary accountability mechanisms for management. Boards have a multipronged portfolio: strategic advice, employment, external linkage and critical scrutiny. The literature casts serious doubts about their capabilities. There is ‘managerial dominance’. This article reviews existing studies on public sector boards and identifies important reasons why boards are likely to fail as accountability mechanis…
Simple nudges that are not so easy
In this paper, we critically review three assumptions that govern the debate on the legitimacy of nudging interventions as a policy instrument: (1) nudges may violate autonomous decision-making; (2) nudges lend themselves to easy implementation in public policy; and (3) nudges are a simple and effective mean for steering individual choice in the right direction. Our analysis reveals that none of these assumptions are supported by recent studies e…
Mounting media pressure
Decision-making in public bureaucracies should be guided by rules and formal procedures, securing predictability, impartiality and fair decisions. Studies show that public bureaucracies are highly mediatised – but knowledge about media impact on political outcomes is scarce. In this article, we study if, how and why media affect agendas, resource allocation and case decisions within public bureaucracies. Empirically, we apply a mixed method appro…
Accountability in the Shadow of Hierarchy
In the Netherlands, new accountability arrangements are created as remedies for the accountability deficit of agencies. These arrangements are of a ‘horizontal’ nature, as the agencies account for their behaviour towards accountees that are not their hierarchical superiors: clients, stakeholders or peers. This paper provides an inventory and qualitative assessment of horizontal accountability arrangements. It is argued that they have added value …
Does Public Accountability Work? An Assessment Tool
In recent years, there has been a drive to strengthen existing public accountability arrangements and to design new ones. This prompts the question whether accountability arrangements actually work. In the existing literature, both accountability ‘deficits’ and ‘overloads’ are alleged to exist. However, owing to the lack of a cogent yardstick, the debate tends to be impressionistic and event‐driven. In this article we develop an instrument for sy…
Does Horizontal Accountability Work
This article addresses the accountability deficit of executive agencies. It argues that the acclaimed deficit consists of two elements: the inability of democratic principals to hold autonomous agencies accountable and the insufficiency of hierarchical accountability mechanisms on their own. Horizontal mechanisms for accountability have been developed in which agencies account for their behavior toward stakeholders, boards of commissioners, and p…
The Accountability Cube
Accountability is one of the cornerstones of a democratic political system, but remarkably little is known of how it works in practice. Much of the literature focuses either on finding the most appropriate definition or on demonstrating the effect of information asymmetries using game-theoretic arguments. This article aims to go one step further by attempting to map out the intensity of accountability processes. Based on an extensive literature r…
The Ontological Challenge
This chapter examines the emergence of accountability as a culturally significant concept that both reflects and shapes changes taking place in our understanding of contemporary governance. The author explores how its emergence as a “cultural keyword” has transformed both the form and function of accountability, and the challenges this development poses for the study of accountable governance.
Public Accountability
Accountability, Legitimacy, and the Court of Public Opinion
The Oxford Handbook of Public Accountability
A. ANALYTICAL PERSPECTIVES B. STUDYING ACCOUNTABILITY C. ACCOUNTABLE GOVERNANCE D. ORGANIZATIONAL ACCOUNTABILITY E. ACCOUNTABILITY MECHANISMS F. DEBATING ACCOUNTABILITY G. REFLECTIONS ON THE FUTURE OF ACCOUNTABILITY STUDIES
The Hybrid Media System
Determinants of Organizational Mediatization
This article seeks to explain why the media affect some governmental agencies more than others. We develop a measuring instrument for the mediatization of agencies; gauging how they adapt to the media. We analyse the effects of six potential explanations of mediatization: media pressure, organizational size and task, salience, geographic location, and management structure. The analysis is based on a comprehensive quantitative contents analysis of…
Predicting Public Sector Accountability
Principal-agent theory has been the dominant theory at the heart of public sector accountability research. The notion of the potentially drifting agent-such as independent public agencies, opaque transnational institutions, or recalcitrant street-level bureaucrats-has been the guiding paradigm in empirical accountability research. The aim of this article is first of all to signal the limits of principal-agent theory as a predictive model of how a…
Media and public accountability
The role of the media in public accountability has often been discussed. This is especially the case for public sector organisations, whose accountability relations have changed in the shift from government to governance. In this paper, we develop a typology of the ways mass media are involved in public accountability processes. Media can stimulate actors to reflect on their behaviour, trigger formal accountability by reporting on the behaviour o…
Fighting or fumbling with the beast? The mediatisation of public sector agencies in Australia and the Netherlands
Public agencies are the objects of a large share of the daily news and devote substantial resources to media management and monitoring. This paper analyses how public agencies have adapted their internal structures and processes in order to meet the demands from their media environment. To this end, an analytical framework for the analysis of organisational mediatisation – the adaptation of internal structures and processes to external media dema…
Entangling and disentangling governance and the media
Mounting media pressure
Decision-making in public bureaucracies should be guided by rules and formal procedures, securing predictability, impartiality and fair decisions. Studies show that public bureaucracies are highly mediatised – but knowledge about media impact on political outcomes is scarce. In this article, we study if, how and why media affect agendas, resource allocation and case decisions within public bureaucracies. Empirically, we apply a mixed method appro…
Why do civil servants experience media-stress differently and what can be done about it
Pressure from the media affects the daily work of bureaucrats and induces ‘media stress’, with potentially critical effects on the quality of public policy. This article analyses how bureaucrats’ daily work has been adapted to the media (‘mediatised’) and which groups of bureaucrats experience the most media-stress. Reporting the results of an original and large-scale survey (N=4,655) this article demonstrates that levels of media-stress vary amo…
Governance, accountability and the role of public sector boards
For many public organisations, boards are the primary accountability mechanisms for management. Boards have a multipronged portfolio: strategic advice, employment, external linkage and critical scrutiny. The literature casts serious doubts about their capabilities. There is ‘managerial dominance’. This article reviews existing studies on public sector boards and identifies important reasons why boards are likely to fail as accountability mechanis…
Simple nudges that are not so easy
In this paper, we critically review three assumptions that govern the debate on the legitimacy of nudging interventions as a policy instrument: (1) nudges may violate autonomous decision-making; (2) nudges lend themselves to easy implementation in public policy; and (3) nudges are a simple and effective mean for steering individual choice in the right direction. Our analysis reveals that none of these assumptions are supported by recent studies e…
A validated measurement for felt relational accountability in the public sector
The effectiveness of formal public sector accountability mechanisms is largely predicated on the individual perception of accountability. In particular, the individual’s experienced relationship to account holders is key in understanding the effects of formal accountability mechanisms. This article develops a measurement instrument for felt relational accountability in public administration. We measure perceived legitimacy and expertise of the ac…
Conflictual Accountability
In contemporary public governance, leaders of public organizations are faced with multiple, and oftentimes conflictual, accountability claims. Drawing upon a survey of CEO’s of agencies in seven countries, we explore whether and how conflictual accountability regimes relate to strategic behaviors by agency-CEO’s and their political principals. The presence of conflictual accountability is experienced as a major challenge and is associated with im…
Management of Multiple Accountabilities Through Setting Priorities
Public sector actors are continuously being held accountable by a multitude of accountability forums. Responding to the forums’ demands often requires prioritizing between them. This study investigates how those prioritization choices are made. Drawing on two competing perspectives: the classical view of accountability as “answerability” which emphasizes hierarchy and control, and the modern interpretation of accountability as “management of expe…
Dissecting multiple accountabilities
The necessity for public sector actors to manage multiple accountabilities in their work has been linked to a number of problems and failures, yet we lack an understanding of how multiple accountabilities affect the decision‐making behavior of civil servants. Here we argue that the main issue is not only the existence of multiple forums as such but the presence of conflicting demands between multiple forums or within a single forum. Drawing on so…
Toward a Public Administration Theory of Felt Accountability
The literature on public accountability is extensive but overwhelmingly focuses on accountability of organizations. Yet, accountability mechanisms can function properly only when individuals believe that they will be held accountable in the future. This article bridges that gap by translating and extending the psychological concept of “felt accountability” to the public administration scholarship. The particular context of accountability in publi…
Understanding Felt Accountability
The literature on autonomous public agencies often adopts a top‐down approach, focusing on the means with which those agencies can be steered and controlled. This article opens up the black box of the agencies and zooms in on their CEO's and their perceptions of hierarchical accountability. The article focuses on felt accountability, denoting the manager's (a) expectation to have to explain substantive decisions to a parent department perceived t…
Learning accountable governance
Current challenges to sustaining public support for health data research have directed attention to the governance of data-intensive health research networks. Accountability is hailed as an important element of trustworthy governance frameworks for data-intensive health research networks. Yet the extent to which adequate accountability regimes in data-intensive health research networks are currently realized is questionable. Current governance of…
Political science (29 obras) · Public Policy and Administration Research (23 obras) · Accountability (22 obras) · Law (21 obras) · Business (18 obras) · Law (17 obras) · Public relations (17 obras) · Public Administration (15 obras) · Sociology (14 obras) · Public Administration (12 obras)