PÉREZ DURÁN, Ixchel <br/><br/>
Assessing formal accountability for public policies :  the case of health policy in Spain 

 - Los Angeles :  Sage,  dec. 2016 
<br/><br/> The aim of this study is to present a framework for analyzing and assessing accountability for public policies. First, I suggest two dimensions for analyzing accountability for policies (the informative/justifying dimension, and the evaluative/sanctioning dimension), applied to the implementation phase of the policy and, in particular, to three central elements that make up this phase (the actors responsible, the resources, and the policy results). Second, I suggest assessing accountability for a public policy starting from the degree of formalization and, specifically, from compliance with four characteristics of its regulatory framework: specific, binding, public and autonomous character. Third, I develop an empirical application of this proposal to the analysis of health policy in Spain, whose decentralized design, where regional governments are responsible for its implementation, allows us to analyze the differences in the levels of accountability for this policy across regions.