García Juanatey, AnaJordana, JacintSancho, David, 1964-2020-05-152020-05-152017García-Juanatey A, Jordana J, Sancho D. Administrative innovations and accountability failures: the termination of the Spanish telecommunications agency. South Eur Soc Polit. 2017;22(3):385-404. DOI: 10.1080/13608746.2017.13457981360-8746http://hdl.handle.net/10230/44585We discuss how far accountability practices may be relevant to the success of independent regulators in countries without a tradition of administrative autonomy. We develop a conceptualisation of agency accountability failures and develop an analytical framework to examine the life and termination of the Spanish regulatory agency for telecommunications, CMT (Comisión del Mercado de las Telecomunicaciones - Telecommunications Market Commission). We argue that the CMT’s termination was related, among other reasons, to accountability failures in its institutional design. The paper relies on a variety of sources, including legislation, literature, media coverage, and semistructured interviews with agency officials and several stakeholders.application/pdfeng© This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in South European Society and Politics on 2017, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/13608746.2017.1345798.info:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13608746.2017.1345798AccountabilityIndependent regulatory agenciesSpainTelecommunications policyCMTInstitutional transferinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess