ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with administrative accountability in twentieth-century America—with the processes that determine what values and whose values will be reflected in administrative decisions in this country. Accountability is the enforcement of responsibility. The processes of accountability include both planned procedures and unplanned social and political forces. Although the two are intermixed, the chapter discusses the formal procedures. These procedures include the court system, the legislature, and the executive hierarchy. Judicial controls give a heavy emphasis in the administrative process to traditional legal forms of procedure. In the American system of government, the legislature is recognized to be the principal organization for setting the values by which we are governed. The American legislatures have a strongly recognized right to prescribe the values of administrative decision and considerable power to enforce these values on administration. The conception of hierarchy stated is very far from describing the realities of public administration in America.
