opportunity for the electorate to hold decision-makers responsible for their choices. What this means in practice is not obvious. Economists will often avoid the word “accountability” because it describes individual choice without referring directly to incentive structures. Instead, it refers to a set of values that can relatively easily be included in a law or a regulation but difficult to implement. Indeed, the meaning of a value-based terminology becomes imprecise when the underlying set of values is inadequately defined.

If the word is supposed to have a practical effect, it will often require that we are able to separate between accountable and nonaccountable choices. This is a challenge, since a lack of accountability can be covered by so many excuses and truly legitimate concerns. In addition, the reference to “accountability” for practical use will often require a certain agreement about the definition of welfare. For instance, when will it be politically legitimate to benefit subgroups on behalf of the total? Similarly, in the context of efforts to address environmental concerns, how should politicians balance the utility of future generations against urgent development needs? The question of accountability is not only about definition or a benchmark, but about values in a society.<sup>10</sup> Similarly, “low” or “high” political accountability, which is so often referred to, easily becomes unclear if there is uncertainty about the benchmark from which low accountability creates deviation. Besides, referring to “low” or “high” political accountability to characterize governance will not have practical value unless the sector-specific characteristics are documented. There can be “low political accountability” in a country, and at the same time, high-quality governance in some sectors. This brings us back to the need to relate accountability to sector performance.

The search for political accountability based on the performance of a sector is not trivial, however; Deininger and Mpuga (2005) show that such use of the term “accountability” is possible. Indeed, they find a positive correlation between the performance of public service delivery and political accountability.<sup>11</sup> But the evidence suggests that the link is hard to achieve systematically. Users who are also voters may have a perception about political performance that deviates from actual performance. For example, there is evidence that infrastructure prices in some countries and sectors went down while quality and access increased as a result of energy reforms in Latin America during the 1990s (see, for instance, McKenzie and Mookherjee 2003; Fay and Morrison 2006; Bonnet et al. 2009). However, surveys on public perceptions showed discontent with the results of reform in infrastructure despite these improvements in sector performance (see Straub and Martimort, 2005; Latino Barometro).<sup>12</sup> A possible explanation could be that voters may not manage to unpack the implications of separate elements of reforms if the outcome for the overall economy is perceived to be negative and/or if reforms have led to high unemployment rates (see, for instance, Huber, Pribble, and Stephens, 2009). Clearly, democracy has many benefits, but it is not necessarily sufficiently effective to ensure accountability when it comes to the performance in a sector as complex as infrastructure—which has delayed and quite opaque payoffs on some dimensions, and high visibility in some others, such as access. A more transparent link between sector performance and policy choices is needed for accountability to be effective.

Ultimately, the main message from this discussion of accountability specific to the infrastructure sector is a common one. The devil is in the details, and hence the details about the risks of political distortions need to be understood much better than they commonly are. They also need to be much more transparently handled if users and hence voters are to succeed in getting governments to pick the policies that improve sector performance. These details are driven by the private agendas that in turn may drive non-benevolence in governance—in terms of deviation from outcomes that are perceived to be more welfare-enhancing. The next section turns to the most common private agendas in politics and how they are likely to bias decisions in sector policy.

> 10 Mueller (2003) offers a useful review of these questions in a public choice perspective.

> 11 Accountability is indirectly measured through corruption (bribes).

12 http://www.latinobarometro.org/ 5