The Watchdogs and the Data
Accountability requires a scorekeeper, and for a long stretch American subsidy policy had none — deals were struck, benefits flowed, and no one systematically checked the box marked "did it work." What changed was not a sudden outbreak of official candor but the patient database-building of outside watchdogs, chiefly Good Jobs First, and one consequential accounting rule that finally forced governments to write down what they were giving away. Data is the precondition for enforcement. You cannot claw back what you never measured, and you cannot pressure a government to enforce a clawback whose existence the public cannot see. The scoreboard is the policy.
Knowledge check
According to Gil, why is data disclosure a precondition for clawback enforcement rather than a separate concern?
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Because enforcement depends on measurement and visibility: a government cannot recapture a subsidy whose performance it never tracked, and the public cannot pressure officials to enforce a clawback whose terms and outcomes are hidden — so disclosure is the foundation on which any accountability mechanism has to stand.