Eduskunnan saama julkista hallintoa koskeva informaatio: ongelmanmäärittelyä

Authors

• Pertti Ahonen

Abstract

Legislative oversight of public administration has remained a neglected area of research. The purpose of the article is to touch the problem from the point of view of the information concerning public administration transmitted to the legislature. An attempt is made to clarify the nature of the problem against the background of four formal principles: technical efficiency, separation of state powers, the traditional ministerial responsibility interpretation of parliamentarism, and the institutions of the parliamentary ombudsman and the parliamentary auditors as information channels available for citizen complaints. The brief empirical illustrations concern the Finnish system. As the four principles are found deficient in application, the problem of oversight is redefined from a public choice perspective through a common game theoretic formulation of the relationships between parliamentary review and bureaucracy. The background assumptions of the model and its possible elaborations are examined. The implications for future empirical research and evaluation are shortly discussed, as well as the critical limitations and the possible inadequacies of the approach.