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Professor Flinders makes a strong case that our obsession with accountability has turned "problematic" and even "pathological". While agreeing with the gist of the argument, I contend that the essence of the problem is more ontological than political. What we require is a radical "reframing" that highlights the pervasive role accountability relationships play in governance— that is, an approach that would shift attention to the alteration of ongoing governance arrangements and relationships that occurs with each reformist effort to "enhance" or "improve" accountability. Governance takes place within accountability spaces, and we need to give priority to research that maps that space as a first step toward understanding the nature and potential of accountable governance.

Notwithstanding our collective failure to define the term to the satisfaction of all, decades of focused attention on accountability have at the least made us aware of those conditions that have made our task so challenging. What we have learned about our subject can be summarized as follows:  Accountability is multifunctional  Accountability is polymorphic  Accountability is situated  Accountability is promiscuous I briefly consider each of these "features" of accountability and conclude by offering a radically different approach to our subject that might help us emerge from the intellectual rut of typologies and cases that we now seem to occupy. I argue that by refocusing our view of accountability – by seeing it in the broader historical context of what I term "meta-problems" – we will be able to take the study of accountability to a different and more fruitful level. As a demonstration of the "meta-problem" perspective's potential, I offer a retelling of one watershed historical episode. I conclude with some brief observations.

An introduction notes that a teacher symposium, "Nurturing Civic Lives: Developmental Perspectives on Civic Education," is a byproduct of an American Political Science Assoc Task Force on Civic Education project to forge working linkages among political scientists & developmental psychologists for the purpose of enhancing the quality & effectiveness of civic education. The history of civic education in America is traced from its roots in a "traditionalist" educational philosophy, through the rise of a developmentalist philosophy of progressivist education that rejected civic education, & finally to the emergence of a civic development perspective that is a response to both a renewed traditionalist movement in education & a growing awareness of the poor state of current civic life. The impact of Lawrence Kohlberg's (1968) moral development approach is discussed, along with the value of cross-disciplinary perspectives, & the growing volume of research on youth civic development. A brief synopsis of each contribution is included. 25 References. J. Lindroth