Legitimising Disaggregated Governance: Accountability, Experimentalism and Democracy in the Big Society

Abstract

A challenge for any programme of disaggregated decision-making is to legitimise the exercise of power by agencies which operate outside what have been historically-centralised accountability mechanisms. The purpose of this piece is to consider the legitimacy of the patterns of power distribution suggested by the coalition government's White Paper on Open Public Services.

The paper considers the extent to which the proposal in the White Paper have been influenced by Big Society thinking.

It also considers whether there are any lessons to be drawn from the literature on democratic experimentalism and, in particular, on the way in which democratic experimentalists like Dorf and Sabel address issues of accountability and democratic legitimacy.

The paper also identifies and briefly examines a number of possible mechanisms for dealing with the concerns expressed about the White Paper's proposals.

Keywords: Big Society, democratic experimentalism, democracy, accountability, legitimacy, White Paper on Open Public Services, Dorf, Sabel, decentralisation, new governance