Welcome “ A Thing of Shreds and Patches ” : Fragmenting Accountability in a Fragmented State

Internal and external pressures are constantly stimulating adaptation of core characteristics and norms of democratic government. In this paper, drawing on the Irish experience, we wish to consider how systems of democratic accountability have responded to fragmentation of government caused by domestic and international demands. In order to further our analysis, we reconfigure the drivers of such demands into bottom-up, horizontal and topdown processes and consider how they are matched by new accountability structures which also have diverse origins. We find that new modes of accountability are diverse, expanding in scope, and of mixed intensity of application. In conclusion, we argue that the fragmentation of accountability structures deserves greater recognition and a degree of re-casting of accountability narratives and policies.