Citizens Against Corruption: What Works? Findings from 200 projects in 53 Countries

I attended a panel + booklaunch on the theme of ‘Citizens Against Corruption’ at the ODI last week. After all the recent agonizing and self-doubt of the results debate (‘really, do we know anything about the impact of our work? How can we be sure?’), it was refreshing to be carried away on a wave of conviction and passion. The author of the book, Pierre Landell-Mills is in no doubt – citizen action can have a massive impact in countering corruption and improving the lives of poor people, almost irrespective of the political context.

The book captures the experience of the Partnership for Transparency Fund, set up by Pierre in 2000. It summarizes experiences from 200 case studies in 53 countries. This has included everything from using boy scouts to stop the ‘disappearance’ of textbooks in the Philippines to introducing a new code of ethics for Mongolia’s judiciary. The PTF’s model of change is really interesting. In terms of the project itself:

-          Entirely demand led: it waits for civil society organizations (CSOs) to come up with proposals, and funds about one in five

-          $25k + an expert: the typical project consists of a small grant, and a volunteer expert, usually a retiree from aid agencies or governments, North and South. According to Pierre ‘the clue to PTF’s success has been marrying high quality expertise with the energy and guts of young activists’. (I’ve now added ‘Grey Wonks’ to my ‘Grey Panthers’ rant on why the aid world is so bad at making the most of older people).

-          The PTF is tapping into a zeitgeist of shifting global norms on corruption, epitomised by the UN Convention Against Corruption (2003). The idea that ‘they work for us’ seems to be gaining ground.

-          The PTF prefers cooperation to conflict – better to work with champions within the state (and there nearly always are some, if you can find them), than just to lob rocks from the sidelines (although some rock-lobbing may also be required).

-          It also prefers action and avoids funding ‘awareness-raising’, ‘capacity building’ and other ‘conference-building measures.’

So what works? On the basis of the case studies (chapters on India, Mongolia, Uganda and the Philippines), and his vast experience of governance and corruption work, Pierre sets out a ‘stylized programme’ for the kinds of CSO-led initiatives that deliver the goods:

1. Nail down the problem: use surveys, focus groups, right to information laws where they exist
2. Come up with (and implement) an action plan: get people involved with community report cards, community radio, public hearings and other approaches
3. Propose ideas for ways to reform the system or reduce the opportunities for corruption, drawing on the results of (1) and (2)
4. Discuss the ideas with stakeholders and amend
5. Campaign to persuade officials and politicians to adopt the ideas
6. Once you’ve won (bit of a leap, that – see cartoon) monitor the implementation of any measures introduced to reduce corruption.

This may look like a bit of a blueprint, but actually it isn’t – the PTF fits the model of how to work in complex systems pretty well. It acknowledges that outsiders can’t possibly understand the labyrinths of formal and informal power, or identify potential allies and windows of opportunity. Those have to come from within. By breaking funding down into small grants, and using only volunteer experts, it tries to keep power away from the consultancy/donor complex, and stay true to being country-driven. At the ODI, Pierre described the underlying theory of change as ‘the aggregation of millions of actions to reach a tipping point.’

He also expanded on the problem of aid institutions. Anti-corruption campaigning is often long-term, over 25-50 year time horizons. That means aid donors can support particular phases, but if they don’t have the staying power to see the work through, they need to avoid trying to control it. Unfortunately, ‘politicians and officials who think they can make their mark are the biggest menace for this work’.

Despite this critique, the book is a pitch for funding from the aid agencies, although Pierre believes that in the long term CSO anti-corruption work will have to find alternatives sources.

Which all sounds great, but the results debate is obviously getting to me, because I did have some sympathy with DFID’s Mark Robinson, who said at the ODI that although the UK Government (which has been a core funder of PTF) ‘is increasingly persuaded about the value of citizens’ transparency and accountability initiatives’, we really can’t be expected to judge PTF entirely on the uplifting case studies and stats collected by, errrm, the PTF.

I raised another issue: the rhythm of civil society action is almost always episodic – long periods of tranquillity (people getting on with their lives), punctuated by episodic spikes of protest. Attempts to turn this dynamic into some kind of permanent state of mobilization are probably destined for frustration and failure. Between spikes, the long term work of renewing or changing social capital, social norms and values etc takes place in the more permanent ‘grains’ of civil society – trades unions, neighbourhood associations, religious communities – that endure between spikes. It wasn’t clear that PTF understands and works with this – it seems to have permanent mobilization as its underlying model of how civil society works.

PTF seems to belong to a family of ‘post supply side’ approaches to governance, which also includes the International Budget Partnership, the research of Matt Andrews or the Africa Power and Politics Programme, as well as Oxfam’s own work on governance and accountability.

What they have in common is the need to move from ‘best practice’ to ‘best fit’, to identify and support locally driven initiatives, and to support coalitions between champions within the system and those outside. Where they seem to differ is on the prominence of civil society in these discussions – at one end of the spectrum is PTF’s perhaps excessive glorification of its role; at the other the APPP’s rather contemptuous dismissal of civil society as irrelevant to the ‘real’ Paul Kagame world of big men and decent chaps sorting out political settlements (’citizen pressure is at best a weak factor and at worst a distraction from dealing with the main drivers of bad governance.’) I would love to see APPP’s David Booth and Pierre Landell-Mills go head to head on this.

To be continued, I suspect (not least because Matt Andrews is in London this week).

Government Spending Watch – a new initiative you really need to know about

I’m consistently astonished by how little we know about the important stuff in development. Take the Millennium Development Goals – the basis forinnumerable aid debates, campaigns, and negotiations. A large chunk of the MDG agenda concerns the size and quality of public spending – on health, education, water, sanitation etc. So obviously, the first thing we need is to know how much governments are spending on these things, right?

Well no actually, because we don’t have those numbers. Until now. Oxfam has teamed up with an influential and well-connected NGO, Development Finance International, which advises developing country governments around the world. Working with a network of government officials, DFI has pulled together and analysed the budgets of 52 low and middle income countries (With another 34 to follow). The result is a new database, called Government Spending Watch, (summary of overall project here) and a report ‘Progress at Risk’, previewed in Washington last Friday in a joint DFI/Oxfam America event to coincide with the IMF and World Bank Spring meetings. The full report won’t be ready ‘til May, but an initial draft exec sum is available, and here’s what it says.

The data cover seven sectors (agriculture/food, education, environment and climate change, gender, health, social protection and water/sanitation), from 2008 to 2015 (including medium-term forecasts). They examine planned and actual spending, disaggregated by types (recurrent and capital), and sources of funds (government revenue or donor funding). There are some major gaps (see map), so the first call is for donors (who are often the worst culprits) and governments to collect and publish more and better data.

The report looks separately at countries with and without IMF programmes (although attributing the differences to the IMF is tricky, and the report avoids doing so). Headline findings are:

• Most countries have been increasing revenue and spending as a % of GDP, but this is now going into reverse
• The sources of government finances have shifted from grants to loans, including more expensive domestic borrowing, raising fears about growing debt burdens (although no new debt crisis is imminent)
• Countries with IMF programmes have raised less revenue, are cutting deficits faster and have seen less positive trends in MDG spending. Agriculture and health spending are now much higher as a percentage of GDP, and education and social protection spending are rising faster in non-IMF countries. Other MDG sector spending is stagnating compared with GDP or total spending.
• For all MDGs, the vast majority of developing countries are spending much less than they have promised or than international organisations have estimated is needed. Only one third of countries are meeting any education or health goals, and less than 30 per cent are meeting agriculture and WASH goals. Trends have been even less positive for gender and sustainable development.
• Some of the spending has been funded by rapidly growing aid – especially in education, health, WASH and agriculture. Progress in these areas is threatened as OECD aid flows are now declining in real terms, and are increasingly moving away from MDG sectors to infrastructure and growth.
• In most countries, actual spending is substantially less than the amounts announced in budgets (see table). This is particularly true in the health, agriculture and WASH sectors, reflecting delays in donor funding, and absorptive capacity problems in sector ministries and decentralised government agencies.
• Types of spending show two worrying patterns. Some sectors (WASH and agriculture) are dominated by investment, raising the need to increase recurrent spending dramatically to maintain buildings and equipment. Others (education, health and social protection) are dominated by recurrent spending on wages and supplies. Especially if donors reduce budget support, which funds much recurrent spending in many countries, governments will need to make even greater revenue efforts to maintain recurrent spending and keep delivering progress.

If the excitement around last week’s prelaunch is anything to go by, this is going to be a really important initiative. According to report author and DFI boss Matthew Martin:

“We had conversations with officials from about 20 IDA countries about their relative performance in terms of spending and transparency and all of them were anxious to see the full data and report, and to improve their performance. Senior donor government officials were also energised about being able to use these data to see country spending inputs for the MDGs and for the post-2015 framework.

Major global campaigns on education and health were anxious to see and use the data. The DC development research community (Brookings, CGD, IMF, World Bank) as well as USAID, MCC and the African Development Bank  were very excited by the data and want to organise further seminars after the full report is published and consider using the data for their own research and policymaking.

We also had great conversations about potential partnerships with the International Budget Partnership (who run analysis and campaigns on budget transparency and accountability), and the BOOST team in the World Bank (who help countries produce much more detailed geocoded data and would like to code it for the MDGs).

All in all, an amazing week: it has felt like standing on a snowball which is rolling faster and getting bigger every day – we start again with the New York academic and UN community next (i.e. this) week.”

Looking ahead, citizens and social movements in poor countries will now be able both to see what their governments are promising and delivering, and to compare that with other countries in the neighbourhood. International bodies will be able to track the extent to which warm words translate into cash on the ministerial table. Internationally, Oxfam will certainly be using the database as a vital new tool to help local citizens and civil society actors ensure their governments actually deliver the goods.

In addition to scaled up advocacy and campaigns, the plan now is for GSW to expand the database to cover more countries and years, and to publish regular updates. But to do that we will need to find funders and advocacy partners. Please form an orderly queue……

How to build local government accountability in South Africa? A conversation with partners

This is what a good day visiting an Oxfam programme looks like. I skim the interwebs (and this blog) to put together some thoughts on a given issue from our experience or what others are writing (‘the literature’). Then sit down with local Oxfamistas and partner organizations (who are usually closer to the grassroots than we are) to compare these bullet points with their reality. Last Friday it was ‘how can NGOs build the accountability of local government.’ My ten minutes covered:

• Supply (training officials) v demand (strengthening civil society) v building collective trust in fragmented societies
• The importance of identifying and working with insider champions within the state – no good shouting at the gates if no-one inside is willing to listen and work with you
• It can be risky – make sure staff and partners have support if the state officials lash out
• Often need to pursue deeper culture change on officials’ attitudes to excluded groups
• Need to choose between focussing on the broader ‘enabling environment’ of access to information, respect for the law, exposing corruption etc or more specific campaigns for housing, electricity, schools etc
• Some interesting examples of text-based complaints mechanisms (India) and name-and-shame league tables (Vietnam)

A lot of this resonated with the South African experience. Some thought-provoking additional points included:

The SA implementation gap between ‘first world norms and standards’ and an underfunded and often chaotic/corrupt corrupt administrative reality is so wide it may even be counterproductive (no point in acting because however hard you try, you can never comply). Local government is hobbled by lack of cash, capacity, and officials’ inability to understand ‘perfect’ guidelines and standards drawn up by distant consultants.

The political incentives are all wrong. Patronage is as big a problem as corruption – party hacks get parachuted into senior administrative jobs, lacking the capacity or interest to perform them properly. ‘People in positions feel very powerful’, and their power springs from playing the political game within the ANC, fighting the internal turf wars rather than doing right by the people.

Despite this, there are officials and politicians willing to do the right thing, either because they are politically progressive and committed (this is the ANC, after all), or because more self-interested political incentives are temporarily/accidentally aligned with those of the popular movement. A huge element of civil society advocacy is built around identifying and building relationships with such individuals. Finding backing for local insider champions (eg from higher tiers of government and politics, or international bodies) can make a real difference in strengthening the hand of the good guys within the state.

But that can be very exhausting: ‘you look at the giant that is Government and it’s so difficult to navigate. You never quite know where to push, (and nor do the officials!). You invest hugely in building intimate relationships only to find they’ve moved department and you have to start all over again.’

Civil society (including Oxfam) don’t always do themselves any favours: ‘CSOs go with the attitude ‘you’re paid to do this, and you drive a 4×4. Why should I congratulate you when you actually do your job?’ So they get nowhere.’

More optimistic times

Options include:

• Judicial activism, but there is little cash to support it, and it is very slow.
• Changing norms: At present ‘there’s no corruption, no shame’ among officials. CSOs could go for broad public awareness raising and pressure along the lines of ipaidabribe.com, ‘they work for us’ websites on the performance of politicians or civil servants, ‘slowest response of the year’ competitions etc. But those in the room thought this would be very risky indeed, given the ANC’s hostility to public criticism.
• Broaden alliances beyond networks of CSOs (which seems to be the default model), not least because civil society currently has access to political leaders (they were often in the anti-apartheid movement together), but little real traction. Partners thought the private sector offered more promise than faith-based organizations or traditional leaders.

We finished by asking everyone to suggest something new to try. Here’s what they came up with:

• Invest much more in ‘positive reinforcement’. Find champions, publicly support them. Build relationships.
• Do more long term awareness-raising  with communities about what the government ought to be doing for them
• Think about a South African ipaidabribe.com
• Budget tracking/ ‘follow the money’ watchdogs to ensure that money allocated arrives intact and is then actually spent (a scandalous amount of health and education money has to be returned to central government because local officials fail to spend it on time).

But in the end, several partners thought that only an increase in political competition, with the ANC facing a genuine chance of being voted out of municipal governments, would shift the behaviours of most officials. Given the state of the opposition, that doesn’t look likely, but I’ll speculate on that in a future post.

And if you happen to be in Cape Town today, why not come along to the Sustainability Institute at 12 to discuss ‘Creating a Just Food System through Active Citizenship‘? Some good panelists (and me).

How can South Africa promote citizenship and accountability? A conversation with some state planners

How can states best promote active citizenship, in particular to improve the quality and accountability of state services such as education? This was the topic of a great two hour brainstorm with half a dozen very bright sparks from the secretariat of South Africa’s National Planning Commission yesterday. The NPC, chaired by Trevor Manuel (who gave us a great plug for the South African edition of From Poverty to Power) recently brought out the National Development Plan 2030 (right), and the secretariat is involved with trying to turn it into reality.

I kicked off with some thoughts which should be familiar to regular readers of this blog: the importance of implementation gaps, the shift in working on accountability from supply side (seminars for state officials) to demand side (promote citizen watchdogs to hold the state to account) and the challenge from the ODI-led Africa Power and Politics Programme that accountability work needs to break free of such supply/demand thinking and pursue ‘collective problem-solving in fragmented societies hampered by low levels of trust’, which seems a pretty good description of South Africa, according to the NPC. I gave the example of the Tajikistan Water Supply and Sanitation Network as an example of how this can be done through ‘convening and brokering’.

Once I shut up, it got more interesting (funny how often that happens). Some of the most interesting questions (and responses from me and others)

Lots of ‘convening and brokering’ is little more than talking shops – when does it lead to concrete results?

• Depends who’s in the room – do they share a common interest in finding solutions or are they there to fight turf wars, defend ideological positions etc?
• Can you build forward momentum by identifying some quick wins that make people realize what is possible?
• Individuals matter – is there a charismatic leader (as in Tajikistan), who can bind the forum together and keep it moving forward?

How to move from dependency to agency? At least some people see a real problem of acquired dependency. Poor people in South Africa have become dependent on free housing, state welfare etc, and have lost their sense of agency. Instead they oscillate between passivity and protest. The government conducts large scale consultation set pieces to try and encourage participation, but what is lacking is the day to day accountability the allows citizens to get action when public services fail.

The civil servants in the room happily disagreed with each other – fascinating to see an internal debate like this – Oxfam colleagues also contributed, so what follows draws on the points raised by people from both organisations. Some saw this as a supply side problem: the lack of public sanction when teachers don’t show up; officials are corrupt etc undermines citizen action; the teachers’ union resist reforms; moreover, ‘politicians only listen when something burns’, turning violent protest into a sensible change strategy.

Others focussed on the demand side, pointing out the problem of time poverty – women in particular just don’t have time to take part in exhausting exercises in citizenship on top of all their other tasks. One of the effects of the fall of apartheid has been an exodus of aspiring socially-motivated black and coloured people both from the teaching profession, and from poor communities, aggravating the problem of sink schools that the middle class, whether black or white, can ignore (especially if they go private). Others questioned this and pointed out that there is actually a lot of protest on the state of public services, and plenty of accountability structures such as school governing bodies, although coverage is patchy.

Which led us to compare the lack of progress in improving the quality of education with the great strides made on tackling HIV and AIDS. Why have the social movements on HIV had so much more impact than in other areas such as education or landlessness?

Here people pointed to the importance of starting with long term awareness-raising, designed both to inform andempower, but also to shift social norms, in this case from seeing HIV as an individual shame to a collective responsibility. This kind of ‘conscientization’, in the language of Paulo Freire, seems ill-suited to state action, so who might be able to do it in the case of education, for example shifting attitudes to seeing poor school grades as a collective, as well as individual, challenge? Social movements? Faith organizations?

HIV was a cross-class, cross-race issue, touching everyone in South Africa, so the movement found it easier to overcome social divisions. By contrast, poor education is tied closely to class and race, so coalitions are harder to build. And of course HIV was also, literally, a life and death issue – motivation was not a problem. In contrast the ‘slow death’ of bad schooling doesn’t galvanize the citizenry to the same extent. How to change that?

Some final thoughts from me:

-          What about trying to shorten the accountability chain in education to make it possible for citizens to get quick action rather than become bogged down in interminable bureaucratic process? How about an education ombudsman with power to investigate complaints and impose sanctions?

-          One of the weaknesses of the National Development Plan is its approach to gender. The half a page on ‘Women and the Plan’ in the NDP Overview fails to mention two major obstacles to citizenship: women’s time poverty and the lack of support for their role in the care economy; and the need to change the role of men. I’m pretty sure that on average, women are more concerned about the state of education, but as free time remains a male concept, they will struggle to do much about it.

Great discussion. This is what makes trips such fun.

Civil Society, Public Action and Accountability in Africa

An important new paper from some big development names – Shanta Devarajan and Stuti Khemani from the World Bank, and Michael Walton (ex Bank, now at Harvard Kennedy School) – directs a slightly fierce (but welcome) political economy gaze at donor efforts to strengthen civil society (one of the more recent developmental fads). As with most such papers, after a monumental literature review, one of the striking conclusions is how little we really know, but it gropes gamely through the fog of ignorance and confusion and arrives at some interesting conclusions.

First, the authors find that something significant is going on among Africa’s citizens: “a large shift in Africa in organization among citizens. Village-level group formation in Africa increased dramatically over the 1990s when participatory approaches were emphasized in international development paradigms, promoted through aid, and adopted deliberately by country governments to deliver projects to communities.” Interestingly, that increased participation applies to both democratic and less democratic systems. The question is in what situations that upsurge in civil society has impact, and how (if at all) aid agencies can help.

The paper adds its support to the growing demand that aid interventions abandon futile searches for ‘best practice’ in favour of understanding what are the ‘best fits’ for any given context:

“In general, aid is most likely to be effective if it essentially organic, in the sense of (a) supporting existing domestic initiatives and pressures for change, and (b) in ways that are consistent with the initial state of the polity.”

But with that caveat, the authors give the thumbs up for some particular kinds of intervention. Italics in square brackets are my attempt at translating the rather academic language.

“There are a number of areas where there is a good prima facie case for support. This will typically be a function of the nature of overall polity. For example, there is the largest range of potential action for democracies with real political competition, albeit of a competitive clientelistic form, whether the regime is consolidated or fragile. [to have impact civil society needs to be able to get traction on the political process, and find potential allies within the state] Here are some categories.

• There is a strong case for general support on information-related initiatives—from information on politician performance, to school test results, procurement processes and so on.
• There is also a contingent case for support for local organizational initiatives that are working with and processing information that the evidence base suggests has potential in solving accountability problems. This domain can include NGOs working with right-to-information laws, think tanks analyzing budgets or regulator behavior, or service delivery outcomes, etc. [no point in supporting access to information if organizations aren’t able to use it or the information is not relevant to poor people]
• A related area concerns support for information for benchmarking of performance of local levels of government, e.g. municipalities; or across local service providers (schools; electricity and water supply), where service quality can be measured and compared [league tables can be effective in naming and shaming officials and politicians and otherwise galvanizing action]
• It often makes sense to support local client-power-related initiatives, but these are only likely to be fruitful if linked to broader change over the long route. [Bottom-up initiatives are good, but only if they can get traction on wider political process]
• Support for the strengthening of compact mechanisms is highly desirable if this has domestic political and technical support. [You need political leadership and/or influential allies within the state apparatus]
• There are two kinds of roles for civil society in the business sector.

o Support for processes that provide mechanisms for both identifying and resolving conflicts between business investment and social and environmental concerns, especially in mining and urban development. [Dispute/conflict resolution]

o Support for business associations working for public goods for business, e.g. agencies such as IFC that are concerned with private business, with the important concern that this needs to take account of conflicts of interest in aid, since such agencies are also often engaged with particular investment projects and firms. [Enabling environment]

Finally, in all cases, there is a need to base any support in an analysis of the nature and functioning of civil society. Civil society can be a force for pressuring the state to be more responsive to citizens and more equitable, or can be a source of exclusion and the reproduction of inequalities. Civil society will also typically work very differently under more and less democratic regimes. [Power and context analysis has to include the power and politics of civil society itself – there are few selflessly altruistic Robin Hoods in real life]

In general, aid should not be focused on “money”. This can be counter-productive. Rather, external partners can provide technical assistance in designing locally-grown interventions; they can play a role in financing information-gathering by local NGOs; and can finance experimental interventions (and their learning). Most valuable is likely to be support for a domestic process of innovation and learning involving a generalized approach of experimentation—of which RCTs are one, but only one, component. [Chucking big money at civil society initiatives is a good way to destroy them. Aid needs to be smart, and about ideas. Trial and error is a better way to pursue success than trying to roll out best practice at large scale.]

Can aid ever lead to transformational changes in accountability relations? Almost certainly not, if designs are hatched and brought in from outside. However, aid can potentially provide a supporting role if it is aligned with the flow of internal initiatives, is consistent with domestic political strategy, and supports greater accountability at the margins of major projects. An aspiration to effect some form of system change is admirable, for both internal and external actors. But for donors this needs to be blended with humility over the limits and unintended consequences of external action, and a central focus on helping domestic actors learn by doing.” [Domestic politics rules. Aid is a bit player, for good or ill. Get over it.]

What does a ‘rights-based approach’ look like in practice? A new Oxfam guide

Sometimes it seems like the devil has all the best tunes, while the angels struggle to get their message across. In development, some of the most interesting and important concepts are rendered impenetrable to non-specialists by a morass of jargon.

Take human rights for example. Today is International Human Rights Day, but I for one, find that the dry, legalistic and jargon-filled language of the ‘human rights community’ often seems depressingly, well, inhuman. One example is, alas, Oxfam’s new ‘Learning Companion to the Right to be Heard Framework’, published today to coincide with this year’s International Human Rights Day’s focus on ‘voice’.

But please read it, because under all the jargon-laden sentences about ‘governance components as mechanisms to ensure transparency and accountability in delivery of quality essential services’ there is some real and useful substance. Trust me.

What the document is really about is how to render power visible – sprinkling magic dust over a community or a process to reveal their underlying power relations – the alliances and coalitions the keep the haves in the driving seat, and keep the have nots in their place; the hidden and invisible forms of power as well as the more obvious kinds; the discontinuities and moments of opportunity for rapid change (whether good or bad). Only when you can ‘see’ power can you really start thinking about how to help poor people redistribute it in their favour.

Oxfam’s framework for doing so is summed up in a simple diagram, (above) covering accountability’s supply (strengthening institutions), demand (strengthening people’s organizations) and supporting people’s movements to demand accountability from the state.

The learning companion then spells out just how to go about that, with lots of case studies from on-the-ground accountability work around the world, plus guidance on how to conduct a power analysis and signposts to the best sources of further info (even if – shock – they’re written by other NGOs).

The companion is part of a welcome move to publish more of Oxfam’s internal thinking (stylistic warts and all). We’ve done the same thing with our internal research guidelines, which are proving a minor download hit. If you’re interested in how Oxfam goes about its work , or in making human rights a human reality, take a look.

More background from Oxfam governance guru Jo Rowlands here.

Building Active Citizenship and Accountability in Asia: case studies from Vietnam and India

Last week I attended a seminar in Bangkok on ‘active citizenship’ in Asia, part of an ‘Asia Development Dialogue’ organized by Oxfam, Chulalongkorn University and the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and supported by the Rockefeller Foundation. It brought together a diverse group of local mayors, human rights activists and academics, and discussed a series of case studies. Two in particular caught my eye.

In India, Samadhan, an internet-based platform for citizens to directly demand and track their service entitlements under national and state government schemes, is being piloted in two districts in Madhya Pradesh and Orissa. The pilot is supported by the UN Millennium Campaign and implemented by the VSO India Trust. Here’s the blurb from the case study:

‘The way Samadhan works is simple. Citizens can file a complaint into the Samadhan system through phone calls, SMS, or the web about any delayed entitlements owed by the government. Once their complaints are filed, the computer registers it by location, time, date, type, and other classifications. A local administration official then reads the complaints and deems an appropriate course of action. Citizens can then track these complaints through their registered number via website or SMS. Once it has been resolved, the citizen receives a message indicating that action has taken place.

The key contribution of Samadhan is that it saves time and increases efficiency for both the citizens and the district administrations. Traditionally, the process of grievance redressing was a lengthy and tedious undertaking. Citizens were required to submit a written application in person at the district headquarters during weekly public hearings. The onerous cost of travel alone can be burdensome to citizens who often have limited resources and time. Now, through Samadhan, citizens can file a complaint with a click.’

It’s early days yet – the complaints are coming in, but the investigations are just getting going (see screengrab from the website). The obvious question is ‘why should officials take more notice of an online complaint than they do of poor people turning up in person?’ There is a huge assumption inherent here that the state wants to hear and redress complaints. When asked about this, Praveen Kumar G, VSO’s India programme manager, said that the primary pressure is political – the fact that the complaints are in the public domain fosters scrutiny and pressure, because bureaucrats are pulled up by their elected bosses if they’re underperforming. But he conceded ‘If we have district leaders who want to do this, it’s easy. If they’re opposed, it’s very difficult.’ Quite. I also assume there is UN dosh funding the government staff required to read and respond to the online complaints, which raises issues of replicability.

The other project is the Provincial Governance and Public Administration Performance Index (PAPI), from Vietnam (why does everything interesting always seem to come from Vietnam?). This is a public index that ranks local government performance. It piloted in 3 provinces in 2009, but now covers the whole country.

The methodology is rigorous (a lot of international experts are advising). Local researchers are recruited and trained to interview a carefully selected sample of 13,000 people all over Vietnam on their experience in dealing with local government in areas such as health and education, the level of petty corruption, and participation.

According to Giang Dang, of CECODES, one of the organizers:

‘The researchers arrive at the village and show a list of names to the village head and say ‘we want to talk to these people’ – they insist on those names, even when the leader says ‘he lives a long way from here, why don’t you talk to this guy who lives closer and is more knowledgeable’.

‘When Vietnam opened up, the two things that arrived first were beauty contests and Coca Cola. So we decided to organize beauty contests. Most opposition came from the contestants in the beauty contest – the public servants.’

Besides the rigour of the research methodology, the secret of PAPI’s success lies in the way it actively recruits champions inside thesystem. Its advisory board has representatives from the National Assembly, ministries, government inspectorates and academia. A key role is played by the Vietnam Fatherland Front (VFF), a mass organization of the Party which supports the project, and ‘opens doors – the VFF goes all the way down to commune level’.

The results are already impressive: ‘higher ranking provinces are keen to keep their position and feature their ranking in all their documents. Some of the lower ranking provinces are starting to set up task forces, and asking us for advice on how to improve performance.’

USAID in Thailand visited PAPI last month and are interested in replicating the project in Thailand (an interesting transfer from a less to a more open political system).

Dr Dang thinks another key to PAPI’s acceptance is that it is run by local researchers, and so is not subject either to the whims of the aid industry, or accusations of foreign meddling in Vietnam’s internal affairs (the project was initiated by UNDP, which is seen as fairly neutral). He thinks this kind of intra-Vietnam comparison between provinces exerts more traction than cross country comparisons, which can be dismissed on the grounds of Vietnam’s unique conditions.

‘There has been a positive response from the public, but we do get some hostile phone calls from officials – ‘who the hell are you to do this!’. At the end of the day, it’s about pressure, and the naming and shaming gets media and creates pressure. We have to make a wave big enough to move the province.’

The interesting question here is why hasn’t this model replicated more? According to Dr Dang, China has something similar, but run by the Party, and Mexico has a comparable project, but that’s about it. He says it took two years of piloting to get the methodology right, find out what way to ask the questions etc and that that approach would have to be repeated in any new country. Funding may be an issue – in this case it comes from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), which seems particularly good at these kinds of long term experiments. Given the response from local government, I wonder if PAPI could become self financing, offering to help the laggards catch up in exchange for a consultancy fee? That raises issues of neutrality/money contaminating the research, but I imagine these could be resolved.

What can we learn from eight successful campaigns on budget transparency and accountability?

Over the last couple of years, the International Budget Partnership has published a set of fascinating case studies of campaigns on issues of government accountability, budget transparency and access to information. I finally sat down and read them all recently (the summer lull is a wonderful thing). What conclusions do they draw (see end of post for links to the case studies)?

As always, good case studies endorse some of your thinking, but also add some new ideas and insights (at least for me). The common ground is that multi-pronged approaches and alliances have more impact. Successful campaigns often work across multiple layers of government (village, district, state, federal), using multiple strategies (research and insider advocacy, street protest, media). The most effective alliances often bring together unusual suspects (eg radical grassroots CSOs and nerdy thinktanks in the Mexico subsidies campaign).

Combined insider/outsider strategies identify and work with allies within the target institutions, and keep the pressure up from outside via ‘popular mobilization’ (pop mob in the awful Oxfam jargon). Reasonably rigorous research (suitably laced with killer facts) is often essential to building credibility with policy makers, and getting them to put up with public criticism from the campaign (India NREGA study).

Good power analysis is essential (e.g. recognizing that the real blockers of NREGA were those with informal power, not those formally responsible for spending decisions, or targeting the home district of the minister because then he will sit up and take notice). Good campaigns respond to unexpected events and opportunities, such as public scandals (Commonwealth Games corruption in the Indian Dalit campaign), or changes in key individuals (new ministers etc).

Litigation is often central to transparency work, especially when there is an implementation gap – governments failing to implement policies or laws (eg Pakistan earthquake or South Africa child support studies)

National and international NGOs can play an important role in helping civil society organizations learn from each other, both within the country and across borders (eg bringing in US environmental organizations in the Mexico subsidies campaign).

Don’t assume that states can deliver what you are demanding - campaigns often have to tackle supply as well as demand, eg training up public officials (eg in NREGA study from India)

So much for confirming received wisdom, at least on this blog. Onto the new ideas, which included:

The role of CSOs and/or key individuals in convening academic fora to generate an intellectual head of steam on a particular issue (eg Mexico subsidy campaign)

Training and support to the media to enable them to use all the information and analysis generated by the campaigns and laws (transparency is not enough if no-one knows how to use the info)

The fulcrum for a campaign can be quite technical (e.g. ‘budget code 789’ in India, urging the government to identify specific spending on Dalits)

Institutional inertia is strong – they often revert to type after the campaign ends (eg India and NREGA)

Training and supporting ministers/officials in sympathetic ministries to take on internal opponents (typically, Finance) (e.g. South Africa, where research strengthened the hand of internal opponents of the Treasury)

This kind of research, conducted with hindsight via interviews with those involved, has its weaknesses – attributing changes to particular campaigns can be tricky, and hindsight tends to airbrush out the role of random events, serendipity etc and make everything seem a bit more deliberate than it actually was. But a thought-provoking set of case studies nonetheless.

The full list (the ones published so far - more on their way) is

Mexico: Evidence for Change: The Case of Subsidios al Campo in Mexico
India: Samarthan’s Campaign to Improve Access to the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in India
South Africa: In the Face of Crisis: The Treatment Action Campaign Fights Government Inertia with Budget Advocacy and Litigation
Argentina: Children’s Right to Early Education in the City of Buenos Aires: A Case Study on ACIJ’s Class Action
India: Tracking Funds for India’s Most Deprived: The Story of the National Campaign for Dalit’s Human Rights’ “Campaign 789″
Pakistan: Earthquake Reconstruction in Pakistan: The Case of the Omar Asghar Khan Development Foundation’s Campaign
Tanzania: Quality of Education Reforms: The Case of HakiElimu’s Campaign of 2005-2007
South Africa: Civil Society Uses Budget Analysis and Advocacy to Improve the Lives of Poor Children

And if you don’t have a summer lull in which to read them all, I thought the first two (Mexican subsidies and India NREGA campaigns) were particularly strong.

What difference does accountability make? Six real life examples from Tanzania (and a great job opportunity)

One of my favourite Oxfam projects is Chukua Hatua (CH) in Tanzania, which is using an evolutionary/venture capitalist theory of change to promote accountability in a couple of regions of the country. CH is now looking for a new coordinator, because the wonderful Jane Lonsdale is moving on – if you fancy taking over, check out the job ad (closing date 20 July).

Talk of ‘Evolutionary theories of change’ all sounds very abstract, so here are six specific examples of the kinds of change the project is bringing about.

1) In Piyaya village (Ngorongoro) women activists who had received CH training on Women in Leadership (WIL) complained to the government about an urgent need for measles vaccinations during an outbreak, organising themselves and then asking for meetings with the village government, councillor and district medical officer. The local authority responded quickly and together with the village government carried out a vaccination programme that also targeted remote sub-villages.

2) In Negezi village (Kishapu), the CH farmer animator mobilised people to ask the government for support to get out-of-school orphans into education. They then wrote to the local authority proposing the construction of a market space in their village so they don’t have to endure a return walk of 4 hours to the nearest market to buy and sell goods. They got the councillor on board and followed up remorselessly; the local authority has agreed and allocated a space and money to construct a market place.

3) In Shinyanga district, CH organized students to hold elections for their student councils and chose girls as the head prefect in 80% of cases. These new leaders then questioned teachers on their lack of attendance to deliver lessons and worked with head teachers to convey their views to the school management committees. School management are now monitoring and trying to improve teacher performance.

4) In Malambo village (Ngorongoro), CH election trackers are monitoring the fulfilment of electoral promises by their councillor and MP, after using voice recorders to record the promises of all candidates during election rallies. The councillor is responding by meeting some of his promises, including the building of a new road, new classrooms and a mobile phone tower, improving both digital and physical communications to the village.

5) In Mwime village (Kahama) the CH farmer animator mobilised villagers to complain about the US$100,000 owed by a Barrick Gold mine, and the village’s lack of genuine representation on the committee established to oversee the contract between mine and villagers. She persuaded the councillor and the MP to bring in a parliamentary committee, and an agreement was made that a new trust would be formed to oversee the compensation and the committee selection would be changed to give fairer representation for the villagers. The committee gave 500,000 Tanzanian shillings (US$325) on the spot for the village to set up a bank account. The village then held a press conference to publicise what had been agreed.

6) In Ololosokwan (Ngorongoro) village, the community won a court case against a tourism company that had obtained a fake title deed back in 1992. In this community, which has several CH groups, CH linked up local NGOs with an international law firm that provided the village with pro bono technical advice and lawyers, winning a favourable ruling by the judge.  25,000 hectares of land (about half the village) has been returned to the village.

And here’s a 15 minute video introducing the CH theory of change and its several initiatives (election promise tracking, farm animators etc)

Once again, if this inspires you, check out the job ad.

When does accountability work have an impact? The importance of Implementation Gaps

I’ve been reading the set of papers Oxfam recently published on local governance and community action (see previous blog) and was struck by how central the issue of ‘implementation gaps’ is in our work.

An implementation gap arises when a set of institutions (often via decentralization), policies or budgets (or all three) exists on paper that should benefit poor people and communities, but is having almost no impact on the ground.

Such a situation provides a particularly good entry point for an INGO like Oxfam because it reduces the political risks of being accused of being a politically interfering foreigner (you are supporting the implementation of what the state has already agreed). What’s more early wins are likely to be easier to achieve and can have a galvanizing effect – plucking a few low-hanging fruit is great for morale and motivation. In terms of power analysis, this is about making the most of ‘invited spaces’ rather than creating new ones.

If the state is particularly effective, then a lot can be achieved through evidence and reason, perhaps facilitating dialogue with excluded minorities, as we did in Vietnam. Or through helping poor people gain access to their legal rights, for example through legal aid – I’m often struck how much of this kind of work we do, and yet it features fairly low down in our wider communications.

If the state is more chaotic, then a greater level of activism and confrontation may be required to get official attention, as in our campaign on access to medicines in Malawi. In South Africa, I have seen our partners organizing ‘toyi toyis’ – a very loud and musical form of war dance – outside the courtroom to pressure the judges to act.

In either case, as Jo Rowlands points out in her overview paper on the country cases studies, there is a need to balance both the supply and demand side of the accountability equation, supporting officials to respond to growing citizens demands, and working to prevent conflicts and breakdowns breaking out between the two sides. Always recognizing, that many activists cross the border between supply and demand, moving from jobs in the state to activism in their communities.

The time horizon for such work is relatively short – this is about lots of mini-victories through which poor people and their communities begin to make the most of their invited spaces and legal rights. It’s not about maximalist demands for total revolution that, to be honest, hardly ever prosper.

In most cases, the right place for an INGO is behind the scenes, supporting local civil society with funding, capacity building, access to information etc. Where civil society is particularly weak, INGOs may have to be more of an actor (as in the Vietnam case).
I guess this is an example of what I meant when I wrote recently about the potential progressive interpretation of the political economists’ insistence on ‘going with the grain’ of local contexts, rather than seeking to impose outside blueprints.

But the programmes go well beyond merely ensuring that governments implement their laws and policies – the trick seems to be to combine working on the implementation gap with something more (to use the fuzzword du jour) ‘transformational’, i.e. helping to unleash the agency and organization of hitherto excluded groups (on the basis of gender, caste or ethnicity) as part of the project. That seems to combine the benefits of lasting change, with the morale-boosting effect of quick (or fairly quick) wins.

As a reminder, the five case studies are:

‘Nothing is impossible’: Women’s rights in Nepal

‘Missing medicines in Malawi’: campaigning against ‘stock-outs’ of essential drugs

‘Where does the money go?’: citizen participation in Turkana, northern Kenya

‘No longer sitting quietly’: building community participation in Vietnam

‘Citizens Wake Up’: The Chukua Hatua programme in Tanzania

This post also appeared on the World Bank’s People, Spaces, Deliberation blog