Accountability in a Compact Governance Context: A Good or Bad Marriage?

Sammanfattning: This thesis’ focus is upon accountability in a compacting governance context – the VSOPP-collaboration between the nonprofit organization Stadsmissionen and the public authority Region Skåne. Previous research has indicated that a collaborating governance context might either challenge traditional aspects of accountability or bring about non-traditional and horizontal aspects of accountability. This thesis investigates the implications of accountability in a compacting governance context by looking closer into the accountability structure of a compacting collaboration, through a case study design, containing qualitative methods and empirical materials such as text text documents, interviews and observations. The analysis of the empirical results indicates that the accountability structure in the VSOPP-collaboration between Stadsmissionen and Region Skåne is characterized by a prevalence of vertical accountability relationships and informal accountability mechanisms, which could be explained by the principal stewardship theory. The analysis further indicates no sign of accountability deficit, but rather favourable conditions for accountability. Furthermore, the thesis contributes both empirically and theoretically to the research field of public administration. The empirical contribution has to do with the fact that research on accountability from a compacting governance perspective is scarce. The theoretical contribution is made by disentangling the “tangled web of accountability” and providing an analytical model of the accountability structure.