Central Bank Independence: Governance, Mandate, and Democratic Accountability

Central banks set monetary policy at arm's length from elected governments. How the boundaries of that independence are drawn — and who bears responsibility for outcomes — is an open and contested question. Central banks in most advanced economies operate with a high degree of independence from elected governments, setting interest rates and managing the money supply under mandates defined by legislation. The arrangement reflects a deliberate institutional design choice, but the appropriate scope of that independence — and the mechanisms by which central banks are held accountable — remains a subject of active debate among economists, legal scholars, and policymakers. — Independent bias measurement: lean -3.0 (−10..+10) · epistemic quality 7.8/10 · scored by 3 external AI judges (DeepSeek, Cohere, Llama). Methodology: https://hellohumans.ai/methodology