Reversing the accountability chain: How relational power can shape accountability in public encounters

Public administration plays a fundamental role in accountability relationships between citizens and the State, but how these take shape in public encounters is remarkably understudied. Analyzing relational dynamics within and around public encounters expands the relational perspective on accountability in public administration—challenging core assumptions of the principal–agent model underpinning studies of citizen–State accountability relationships. We conducted a critical-interpretivist ethnography of public encounters in the UK Tax Credits (TC) system and share findings from our Constructivist Grounded Theory Analysis of multiple data sources, including twenty-eight open interviews. We discuss four relational dynamics of account-giving—emerging from the interplay of neoliberal discourse, digital technologies, and communicative practices—that “reversed the accountability chain.” We demonstrate how claimants experiencing significant financial and emotional hardship, in their encounters with an unaccountable State, became accountable for their TC obligations and welfare. We explain these findings by mobilizing interdisciplinary theory from critical accounting research on relational power to offer original conceptual and empirical insight into the interactive, dynamic, and emergent accountability relationships between citizens and agents of the State.