What accountability mechanisms include
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Accountability mechanisms are the various formal ways institutions and officials can be required to explain, justify, and be held responsible for their decisions, ranging from elections and parliamentary scrutiny to courts, audits, and independent oversight bodies, even when nobody is paying close attention, a reality that shapes expectations going forward.
No single mechanism is generally sufficient on its own, since each addresses a different kind of failure: elections address broad policy direction, courts address legality, and audits or oversight bodies address administrative conduct that might otherwise escape attention entirely, which is central to how the system actually works, a point that becomes clearer in hindsight.
A healthy system typically layers several of these mechanisms together, so that a gap or weakness in one is more likely to be caught by another, rather than relying on a single point of accountability to catch every kind of problem, though the practical effect can vary considerably.