Who is this for? How felt accountability shapes the enactment of accountability in public service delivery
基于民族志田野调查，研究揭示了街头官僚如何在正式责任要求与内在责任感知之间权衡、重新解释或重构责任，并提出了一个同心圆责任模型。
Abstract What makes accountability work? To answer this question, public administration research has long focused on formal mechanisms—–rules, audits, and performance indicators—intended to ensure that public employees answer for their actions. Yet these mechanisms alone rarely determine how accountability plays out in practice. Rather, it depends on how they are recognized, internalized, and enacted by those expected to comply. This realization has spurred growing interest in how employees perceive and enact accountability in the context of public service delivery. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this study unpacks how street-level bureaucrats navigate tensions between formal accountability demands and their internalized perceptions of accountability. The findings reveal how employees weigh, reinterpret, or reframe accountability based on what they perceive to be at stake. To conceptualize this, the article introduces a concentric model of accountability.