Accountability publique : une analyse synthétique

Nowadays, the concept of accountability is widely used and is one of the key principles of public governance. It meets the requirements of transparency and helps ensure that governments continue to pursue publicly valued goals. This concept is central to the recent restructuring of the State that tends to empower decentralized units and wishes therefore to have a greater control over them. Accountability is indeed perceived as necessary to ensure a proper and non-opportunistic use of public authority. This concept, however, is extremely complex and its definition is not an easy task. This booklet aims at analyzing, in a synthetic way, what public accountability means today.