New development: Accountability without capability? Civil society organizations as infrastructure for ‘accountee-ability’

Public financial accountability systems are increasingly technocratic, formalistic and disconnected from public decision-making. In an era of democratic backsliding and declining public trust,increasingly complex financial disclosures often create a data-rich yet insight-poor environment that widens society’s capability gap. Extending Steccolini’s (2026) concept of ‘accountee-ability’ as the identities, capacities and conditions that enable government to be held accountable, this article examines how civil society organizations (CSOs) serve as essential democratic infrastructure.The article proposes a conceptual framework centred on three interrelated CSO roles that address specific structural inequalities: direct accountees (bridging technical capacity gaps), enablers(reducing information access inequalities), and co-producers (addressing imbalances in power and influence). Finally, the article outlines the governance tensions arising from capacity asymmetries,information inequalities and power imbalances that shape these roles, and provides actionable implications for public managers, CSO leaders and oversight bodies, alongside a future research agenda for demand-side accountability.