Accountability and Participation: A 21st century dilemma Workshop

The International Centre of Public Accountability (ICOPA) at Durham University is delighted to announce its fourth international workshop: “Accountability and Participation: A 21st century dilemma”.

Scholars, practitioners and the public increasingly demand that public services are more participative in democratic societies. On the one hand, scholars have argued that democracy itself relies upon the idea of participation (and related concepts like accountability, transparency and legitimacy) for its successful functioning. On the other hand, services are often best provided when individuals can shape them so that they meet their needs. Voice (from a variety of stakeholders) is seen as a way through which public services can both improve accountability and gain legitimacy.

Democratic societies claim that they are legitimate because their citizens shape their governments. In early democracies, like ancient Athens, citizens could expect to participate immediately and intimately with politics (Mitchell, 2015). As representative government evolved, arguments that suggested citizen participation was crucial to its legitimacy and accountability continued to be heard (Skinner, 1998). Democratic governments in the modern world, however, are inherently bureaucratic because of the breadth of public services they deliver (Peters, 2010; Etzioni-Halevy, 2013; Peters et al., 2022). This creates the problem of how to reconcile a commitment to participation with the requirements of large and complex governmental organisations, often opaque to the views of outsiders. Recently, it has been argued that making such debates happen, and making these inclusive, is central to ensure decisions are legitimate and enable the underpinning of a free society (Brown, 2009; Ferry et al., 2024a; McDonald et al., 2024). However, questions have often been raised about whether the structures created to enhance participation - such as participative budgeting and citizen fora - really achieve their objectives (Barbera et al., 2016; Kuruppu et al., 2016). Accounting can play a critical role in underpinning such participation, by making visible that which is often invisible to a number of different stakeholders; however, it is unclear whether and how contemporary accounting really performs this role (Cordery and Simpkins, 2016; Ferry et al., 2024b). From an external organisational perspective, it would be crucial that citizens can shape, as well as be shaped, by government actions both instrumentally, as their participation increases their compliance with rules and regulations, and because through participation government action become legitimate (Ferry et al., 2021; 2024b).

Internal participation is also essential for public-sector organisations to succeed and thrive. When new accounting practices are introduced, for instance, facilitating staff participation and voice in the process affects the outcomes that are delivered and the level of acceptance for those outcomes.

(Chattopadhyaty et al., 1999; Hyndman and Liguori, 2019). For the co-design and co-delivery of public services to work, scholars have also argued that both citizen and staff involvement is fundamental to deliver real inclusive co-production for those services (Loeffler and Bovaird, 2017; Licsandru et al., 2025). Different modes of delivery involve different governance systems, which, in turn, rely upon mobilising participation and accountability tools at different levels. This is particularly important when public services are provided by nonprofit organisations, a case where the involvement of both donors and beneficiaries is desirable (Hyndman, 2020; Hyndman et al., 2021). Further research is particularly required on how public services can build in participation (and through this increase accountability, transparency and legitimacy) in different contexts, analysing what meaning those different forms of participation have and how they are perceived by those invited to participate.

The workshop welcomes contributions on all aspects connected to accountability, accounting and participation in the context of public services (including public-sector and nonprofit organisations). Different and innovative methodological approaches are encouraged, as are international comparative studies. Topics suitable for the workshop include, but are not limited to:

• How accountability, transparency and participation work together during public-service provision
• Formal versus informal mechanisms of accountability and participation
• Citizen (politician and potential user) understanding of and engagement with public-service accountability systems
• How best to account (or counter-account) for public services
• How performance measurement frameworks can be constructed using the participation of different stakeholder groups
• The interaction between performance measurement frameworks and participation
• Whether neo-liberalism inhibits or advances the participatory process
• Citizen involvement (e.g., co-production) in public-service provision and accountability processes in different forms and contexts
• Participatory budgeting and its development over time.
• How controllers and line managers view participation in the context of different organisational budgeting and performance-management systems
• Organisational participation and voice processes
• How nonprofit organisations contribute to the delivery of public services, and their experiences of, and requirements for, participation and accountability
• Volunteers’ engagement with participatory processes and ways to be accountable to them

To indicate your interest in presenting at the workshop, abstracts (500 words max) should be kindly sent to the ICOPA email address (centreforpublicaccountability@durham.ac.uk) no later than the 6^th October 2025. The submission deadline for receipt of completed papers for the workshop is 1^st December 2025. Any email submission should include the subject heading: ICOPA Workshop 2025 submission.

Workshop Scientific Committee

Professor Laurence Ferry (Durham University), Professor Noel Hyndman (Durham University and Queen’s University Belfast), Professor Mariannunziata Liguori (Durham University), Dr. Henry Midgley (Durham University)

The Workshop Scientific Committee will review the papers to be accepted for the workshop.

Professor Laurence Ferry, Professor Noel Hyndman, Professor Mariannunziata Liguori and Dr. Henry Midgley will also separately guest edit a Special Issue of the Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal titled ‘Accountability, democracy and participation in tumultuous societies: making it count’. Journal submissions for this are expected to open in March 2026

Workshop attendance fee: £90 per delegate

Register online

Information will be available from August on the ICOPA’s website at:

https://www.durham.ac.uk/business/research/centres/icopa/

General registration closes on 26^th November 2025.

Workshop Organising Committee

Professor Mariannunziata Liguori, Dr. Henry Midgley, Dr. John Millar (Durham University)

Workshop important dates

Submission deadline for workshop abstracts: 6^th October 2025

Decisions on paper acceptance for workshop presentation by 13^th October 2025

Submission of completed papers to workshop by 1^st December 2025

Workshop dates: 15^th - 16^th December 2025

References

Aleksandrov, E., Bourmistrov, A. and Grossi, G. (2018). Participatory budgeting as a form of dialogic accounting in Russia: Actors’ institutional work and reflexivity trap. Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, 31(4), 1098-1123.

Barbera, M., Sicilia, M. and Steccolini, I. (2016). What Mr. Rossi Wants in Participatory Budgeting: Two R’s (Responsiveness and Representation) and Two I’s (Inclusiveness and Interaction). International Journal of Public Administration, 39(13), 1088-1100.

Brown, J. (2009). Democracy, sustainability and dialogic accounting technologies: Taking pluralism seriously. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 20(3), 313-342.

Chattopadhyay, P., Glick, W.H., Miller, C.C., and Huber, G.P. (1999). Determinants of executive beliefs: Comparing functional conditioning and social influence. Strategic Management Journal, 20, 763-789.

Cordery, C., and Simpkins, K. (2016). Financial reporting standards for the public sector: New Zealand’s 21^st century experience. Public Money and Management, 36(3), 209-218.

Etzioni-Halevy, E. (2013). Bureaucracy and democracy: a political dilemma: revised edition. London: Routledge.

Ferry, L., Hardy, C., and Midgley, H. (2021). Data, trust, democracy and Covid-19: the first parliamentary assessment of the UK government’s approach to data during the pandemic. Public Money and Management, 41(8), 676-678.

Ferry, L., Midgley, H., and Green, S. (2024a). Accountability, emergency and liberty during COVID-19 in the UK 2020–22. Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, 37(1), 176-198.

Ferry, L., Midgley, H., and Haslam, J. (2024b). Democracy, accountability, accounting and trust: A critical perspective reflecting on a UK Parliamentary inquiry into the role of government accounts. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 99, 1-19.

Hayek, F. (1937). Economics and knowledge. Economica, 4(13), 33-54.

Hyndman, N, and Liguori, M. (2019) Accounting change in the Scottish and Westminster central governments: A study of voice and legitimation. Financial Accountability & Management; 35, 390–412.

Hyndman, N. (2020). UK charities and the pandemic: Navigating the perfect storm. Journal of Accounting & Organizational Change, 16(4), 587-592.

Hyndman, N., Liguori, M., and McKillop, D. (2021). Many stones can form an arch, singly none:(Re‐) establishing trust in charities. Financial Accountability & Management, 37(4), 385-398.

Kuruppu, C., Adhikari, P., Gunarathna, V., Ambalangodage, D. , Perera, P., and Karunarathna, C. (2016). Participatory budgeting in a Sri Lankan urban council: A practice of power and domination. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 41, 1-17.

Licsandru, T., Meliou, E. Steccolini, I. and Chang, S. (2025). Citizens' Inclusion in Public Services: A Systematic Review of the Public Administration Literature and Reflection on Future Research Avenues. Public Administration. https://doi.org/10.1111/padm.13049.

Loeffler, E., and Bovaird, T. (2017). From participation to co-production: widening and deepening the contributions of citizens to public services and outcomes. In The Palgrave handbook of public administration and management in Europe (pp. 403-423). London: Palgrave Macmillan UK.

Loeffler, E., and Bovaird, T. (2021). User and community co-production of public value. The Palgrave handbook of co-production of public services and outcomes, 31-57.

McDonald, B., III, Ferry, L., McCandless, S., Jordan, M., Steccolini, I., Bartle, J., Ahrens, T., Haslam, J., Joyce, P., & Polzer, T. (2024). A Polyphonic Debate on Social Equity Budgeting. Public Administration https://doi.org/10.1111/padm.13039.

Mitchell, T.N. (2015). Democracy’s beginning: the Athenian story. Yale University Press.

Peters, B.G. (2010) Bureaucracy and democracy. Public Organizations Review, 10, 209–222.

Peters, B.G., Pierre, J., Sørensen, E., and Torfing, J. (2022). Bringing political science back into public administration research. Governance, 35(4), 962–982.

Skinner, Q. (1998). Liberty before Liberalism. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.