Accountability through mutual attunement : how can parliamentary hearings connect the elected and the unelected?

First published online: 15 December 2020The increased authority delegated to independent agencies raises questions about the conditions of politically accountable governance, and specifically parliament’s role as a representative institution. Focusing on committee hearings as an accountability mechanism, we ask: How can a parliament employ hearings to ensure that the ends pursued by agencies have a democratic foundation? We propose a model of “mutual attunement” where accountability relations presuppose a process of working-out shared understandings of the ends, means and circumstances of policy needs. We test our argument through a case study assessing the interaction between the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic & Monetary Affairs and the European Securities and Markets Authority. Theoretically, we contribute to discussions on agency accountability and European governance, while providing a novel conceptual model and the first analysis of its kind.This article is part of the project Democracy and Expert Rule: The Quest for Reflexive Legitimacy (REFLEX) which is funded by the Research Council of Norway)