The concept of accountability in the public sector stems from the use of delegated authorities where the supervisor holds the subordinate accountable, and this evolves into a principle of ‘democratic chain of delegation’ where citizens hold executives accountable (Strom, 2000). While the meaning of accountability has been broadened to normative and value-laden domains, its framework has been developed in the specific context of New Public Management (NPM) reforms. This led to the framework focusing too narrowly on “managerial accountability,” which, on the other hand, stimulates considerable intellectual efforts aimed at building up complementary work for public accountability to fill the gap between the concept and its framework.

Under the umbrella of NPM, financial accountability has been a prominent concept among different areas of accountability. Due to its inclination toward quantitative terms and toward the principles of economy, efficiency, and output, the new arrangements for financial accountability, such as business-like accounting and performance-based budgetary systems, were particularly well promoted under the NPM regime. At the same time, however, the conceptual and analytical base for financial accountability has been relatively weak and far more skewed by NPM-specific perspectives. For this reason, the framework of financial accountability remains highly dependent on a broad outline of accountability. Its weak framework leads to unproductive controversy over the concept, also seriously impairing the ability to provide practical guidance on governance. Thus, this paper aims to develop a strong foundation that can serve to enrich the dimensions of financial accountability and can provide a systematic and critical evaluation of the related literature.