Public accountability: an open concept

The current public administrative system is characterized by a predominance of horizontal relationships within a complex network system, in which public and private entities interact. In turn, transparency increases its importance, and it ensures that these relations can be developed in a secure and trusted environment. Along with that, gradually, the traditional "control" exercised (from the institutional or social field) over the public authorities activity, not only has not been limited, but adopts a relevant growth, as its materialization ways are being expanded and developed. In this article we make an approach to the concept of "accountability" as a manifestation of control to carry out over the public authorities activities, inquiring not only in its roots, meaning and forms, but also in its implications within the administrative contemporary systems.