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This paper explores the role and experience of external actors, particularly donors, in supporting social and political action in fragile, conflict and violence affected settings. Evidence is distilled from a wide range of synthesised sources to generate relevant findings and questions in relation to what we know and what we don’t. Included among the source material is a 2016 macro-evaluation of DFID’s empowerment and accountability (E&A) programmes which examined over 50 DFID funded...

Three challenges from Making All Voices Count research on responsive governance

This paper explores the current state of thinking among a range of aid actors (multilaterals, bilateral, applied scholars and international non-governmental organisations) on how to promote empowerment and accountability in fragile, conflict and violence affected settings. It seeks to identify trends, gaps and weaknesses in that thinking, and propose research questions and hypotheses to test. Three underlying sources of confusion are identified that are hindering progress on both...

Expanding mobile networks and falling costs could transform communication between African citizens and governments. So far, however, attempts to harness new technologies to improve transparency and accountability in Africa and elsewhere have had disappointing results. What is going wrong? Research suggests that an important reason for this failure is a poor understanding of technologies and limited skills in developing and using them. It seems that civil society organisations (CSOs) and...

Van Deth’s comprehensive ‘conceptual map of political participation’ has reinstated a lively debate about the concept of political participation, and provides some compelling solutions to it. However, an important question that has been raised is whether van Deth’s map actually achieves its main goal of unambiguously identifying and classifying emerging, complex types of participation, like online political activism – or lifestyle politics. To contribute to this debate, this article aims to...

This collection of learning and reflection essays from the International Budget Partnership's 2016 Annual Report illustrate the multidimensional nature of budget work and democratic engagement. Read more.

In this article we seek to revisit what the term ‘technopolitical’ means for democratic politics in our age. We begin by tracing how the term was used and then transformed through various and conflicting adaptations of ICTs (Information and

This paper shares lessons from Nesta’s research into some of the pioneering innovations in digital democracy which are taking place across Europe and beyond

The change Making All Voices Count wants to see is more responsive, accountable governance. The programme has contributed to this change by supporting tech-enabled initiatives which amplify citizen voice and nurture government responsiveness, and by building understanding of when and how the technologies help create and support change. In March 2017, partners from 34 of the programme's projects met with Making All Voices Count staff and associates in South Africa in order to share their...

Research on the Information Society, the Digital Divide and Information and Communication Technologies for development

New communication technologies are celebrated for their potential to improve the accountability of humanitarian agencies. The response to Typhoon Haiyan in 2013 represents the most systematic implementation of “accountability to affected people” initiatives. Drawing on a year-long ethnography of the Haiyan recovery and 139 interviews with humanitarian workers and affected people, the article reveals a narrow interpretation of accountability as feedback that is increasingly captured through...

The Philippines has a long history of state–society engagement to introduce reforms in government and politics. Forces from civil society and social movements have interfaced with reform-oriented leaders in government on a range of social accountability initiatives – to make governance more responsive, to introduce policy reforms, and to make government more accountable. Several theoretical propositions on which strategic approaches work best for social accountability initiatives have been...

This working paper argues that the growing field of transparency, participation and accountability (TPA) needs a conceptual reboot, to address the limited traction gained so far on the path to accountability. To inform more strategic approaches and to identify the drivers of more sustainable institutional change, fresh analytical work is needed. This paper makes the case for one among several possible strategic approaches by distinguishing between “scaling up” and “taking scale into...

We know that gaining access to information and raising citizen voices are not the same as achieving accountability. It is important to look beyond the symptoms of accountability failure, and consider how to tackle the causes. This short research summary discusses different understandings of scale, one important aspect of making transparency and accountability initiatives more strategic. Scale shapes both the causes of accountability failure and the tactics and strategies needed to address it.

What are the possibilities of using new digital technologies alongside radio to help ensure that agricultural development projects are farmer-centred, and meet the needs of the rural citizens they intend to serve? This research assesses Farm Radio International’s Listening Post – a model that combines radio and digital technologies with the aim of collecting and aggregating farmer feedback to aid decision-making and adaptive project implementation. The research shows that linking a...

The six case studies in Governance and Service Delivery: Practical Applications of Social Accountability Across Sectors illustrate the multiple ways citizen participation in accountability – called social accountability – can lead to positive effects on governance, citizen empowerment, and service delivery. Drawing on their extensive experience implementing international donor-funded programs and projects, the authors examine six recent RTI International projects in Africa and Asia. The...

How to achieve democratisation in the neo-patrimonial and agrarian environments that predominate in sub-Saharan Africa continues to present a challenge for both development theory and practice. Drawing on intensive fieldwork in Western Uganda, this paper argues that Charles Tilly’s ‘democratisation as process’ provides us with the framework required to explain the ways in which particular kinds of association can advance democratisation from below. Moving beyond the current focus on how...