More and more policy issues and administrative decisions are having greater effects over longer periods of time. However, the discussion on moral obligations of public servants to future generations remains tenuous. The first question in relation to accountability is always ‘to whom is account to be rendered,’ i.e., ‘who do public administrators serve in the long term?’

Frederickson (1994: 461) assumes “temporal generations” to be four generations of twenty years each, and defines “near-term future generations” as “the children, grandchildren, and in some cases, great-grandchildren of temporal generations” and “future generations” as “those living beyond the great-grandchildren of temporal generations.” Thompson (2010) also seems to share some basic ideas about differentiating between short-term and mid-term generations (e.g., favoring current elderly at the expense of children) as well as between both terms and long-term generations (e.g., the interests of current constituents and their near progeny versus the interests of future generations).

Solum (2001) presented an interesting discussion that links the definition of generation to corresponding real-world problems. According to Solum, the notion of generation is largely affected by socioeconomic, demographic, and cultural factors. For the sake of simplifying shortcut for the discussion of public policy questions, the author suggested that “a fuzzy-edge demographic unit,” such as “the Baby Boomer generation,” can refer back to the concrete example of related policies, such as the benefits and financings of social security policy (Solum, 2001: 169). In addition, Solum (2001: 171) distinguished “unborn future generations” from the current generations, referred to as “all future persons who will not be born until the last person now alive has died.”

About what are public administrators accountable?