- Title
- Of no account?: South Africa's electoral system (non) debate
- Creator
- Vincent, Louise
- Date
- 2006
- Type
- text
- Type
- article
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141657
- Identifier
- vital:37994
- Identifier
- DOI: 10.1080/02589000500513796
- Description
- Accountability can be summarised simply as ‘answerability’ (James and Hadland 2002:1) and is a vital cornerstone of representative democracy. Without accountability, an electorate, once having put into power a particular representative, has no recourse to explanations, justifications or reviews of how that person has performed and whether or not they have fulfilled the promises which secured their election in the first place. In a representative democracy mechanisms of accountability are necessarily multiple and must include both formal and informal dimensions. The electoral system is but one of these. Other key lynchpins in the accountability engine include the role of opposition parties, the committee system, the media, civil society, the courts, and what in South Africa are referred to, on the basis of the 1996 Constitution, as the ‘Chapter Nine Institutions’: the Public Protector, Human Rights Commission, Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities, Commission for Gender Equality, Auditor-General, and the Electoral Commission.
- Format
- 20 pages, pdf
- Language
- English
- Relation
- Journal of contemporary African studies, Vincent, L., 2006. Of no account? South Africa's electoral system (non) debate. Journal of contemporary African studies, 24(1), pp.81-100., Journal of contemporary African studies volume 24 number 1 81 100 January 2006 1469-9397
- Rights
- Publisher
- Rights
- Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the Taylor and Francis Online Terms and Conditions statement (https://www.tandfonline.com/terms-and-conditions)
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Collections
Vincent, Louise (Prof)
RU Department of Political and International Studies
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | Of no account.pdf | 676 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |