Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies

This work has two main purposes: to analyze, from the point of view of information transparency and accessibility, the normative framework of how municipal authorities are held accountable in the state of Sonora and to briefly review and explore the assessments rendered over their accounts. Thus, the work revises March and Olsen’s neoinstitutionalist approach to accountability, then proposes a list of features for the information, the process and the social environment of public accounts, revises the normative framework of municipal accounts in the state of Sonora; describes the content of assessments of the year 2003; presents a sample of the observations and conclusions and reflects and comments on the observations, marks and sanctions made within the assessments. One of the main ideas of this work is that the democratization of the public accountability requires the development of a network of independent and interplaying public agencies, social groups and civic organizations who watch the authorities and holds them accountable.