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This article discusses the consequences of changing views on accountability in democratic decision-making. Trends in Norway indicate that Norwegians are evaluating local democracy increasingly in terms of service performance and output, rather than in terms of political input from citizens. While traditional process evaluation is associated with governmental hierarchies and how voters can make elected representatives accountable for their policies, performance evaluation has connections with the logic of the market. It represents a shift from collective political control to individual consumer satisfaction, and consequently, from public to private accountability. Some highly prized democratic values, such as vertical political accountability, informed discussions of the totality of interests, and traditional democratic will-formation, could be lost on the way.

"This book provides an illuminating and comprehensive overview of Habermas' work. It explores the way in which his theories have developed and changed in the last twenty years, leading to an exposition of his more complex ideas and theories. His theory of communicative action is analysed, as are key themes, such as rights, public deliberation, law and democracy, and how they inter-relate. The question of how institutions can be designed to facilitate problem solving and conflict-resolution in a communicative manner is also discussed, and so is Habermas' contribution to the theory of international relations."--Bloomsbury Publishing

Following the "behavioral revolution" in the social sciences, analyzing political behavior as strategic action has become a dominant paradigm in political science. However, many political processes become incomprehensible from a purely strategic angle. Only a concept of politics as communicative action can explain how people reach mutual agreements on factual and normative matters. Some analysts seem to assume that whenever actors take a position in a debate that coincides with their own interest, the employed arguments must be understood as a strategic device to promote this self‐interest But this explanation in most cases seems too simplistic and, from a communicative perspective, beside the point. In an open debate it will still be the rational weight of the arguments that matters, not the eventual strategic interests of the participants. Rational communication is a precondition for civilized conflict resolution as well as for the stability and durability of the political order.Max Weber provided us with a typology of goal‐oriented behavior which included, along with the rational self‐interest variety, which he called Zweckrationalität, or instrumental behavior, Wertrationalität, or absolute value‐oriented behavior, traditional or habitual behavior, and impulsive behavior. From this perspective we can see what a small part of the reality we, as social scientists, want to explain is captured by the rational choice model (Almond 1991, 49).