Horizontal Accountability: The Legal Institutionalization of Political Distrust

Abstract

This article continues previous considerations of what at the time I have called “horizontal accountability”. It begins by posing in very general terms what I believe is, strictly, a contradiction between, on the one hand, the aspirations of achieving high centers of decision with decision-making capacity and, on the other hand, to protect themselves from the power accumulated by these centers. After reviewing the democratic, republican and liberal theories’ positions on this issue, two types of horizontal accountability agency are distinguished: the balance ones and the assigned ones. The text concludes by arguing that probably the most interesting phenomena, both from the practical and the theoretical point of view, and in the need of a lot of research, are in the interactions between the horizontal and vertical accountabilities.