MAKING DEMOCRACY DELIVER – EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Executive Summary

Democratic Governance

United Nations Development Programme

304 East 45th Street, New York, NY 10017

www.undp.org/governance

June 2007


Executive summary

1.  Introduction: How do we make democratic governance deliver? Pippa Norris

FORGING SOCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY

2.  Citizen community boards and social audits in Pakistan Patrick Keuleers

3.  Civil society and social accountability Bharati Sadasivam and Bjøern Førde

4.  Rights to information: experiences from India Elizabeth McCall and Alexandra Wilde

MOBILIZING ACTIVE CITIZENS

5.  Mobilizing voter turnout: Nicaragua and Slovakia Aleida Ferreyra, Linda Maguire, Noha El-Mikawy and Kango Lare-Lantone

6.  Conflict-prevention and elections: Mozambique and Guyana Siphosami Malunga and A.H. Monjurul Kabir

STRENGTHENING STATE CAPACITY TO DELIVER

7.  Parliament and poverty reduction: the Tanzanian experience Vibeke Wang, Hilde B. Selbervik, and K. Scott Hubli

8.  E-governance service delivery: India and South Africa Raul Zambrano and Pierre Dandjinou

9.  Ensuring women’s rights to inheritance: Rwanda and Ethiopia Nina Berg, Haley Horan and Deena Patel

CONCLUSIONS: ENSURING ALL PEOPLE BENEFIT

10.  Conclusions: Human development, equality, and public policies Selim Jahan

Notes about Contributors

List of Related Electronic Resources

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Synopsis

Chapter 1:

Introduction: How do we make democratic governance deliver?

Pippa Norris

How can democratic governance deliver more effectively? What are the links between democratic governance and human development? Will the spread of democracy gradually contribute towards the welfare of the poor and thus alleviating many of the basic problems highlighted by the Millennium development Goals?

To address these issues, this study presents a dozen case-studies of practical governance innovations which have been tried and tested in developing countries. These strategies hold considerable promise of deepening democracy and strengthening human development, gender equality, human rights, and civic engagement. Based on case-study evidence, this study develops a theoretical framework which emphasizes that two essential conditions are necessary to link democratic regimes with better lives for the poor: namely, there have to be inclusive channels of political participation by all stakeholders in society, both directly through local communities as well as indirectly through elections, and there also have to be capable and responsive states which can manage the delivery of public goods and services.

In terms of inclusive participation, electoral democracies need effective channels to allow the poor, weak and disadvantaged to participate equally in the public sphere, to articulate their demands, and to advance their interests within each nation through political parties, civil society organizations, and social movements that can press for redistributive justice. Opportunities for participation through free and fair elections with a universal franchise, as well as the existence of fundamental freedoms and human rights, are fundamental to representative democracy. Direct channels of social accountability, exemplified by community boards, social audits, and participatory processes of local decision-making, are other important institutions helping to facilitate this process, especially in weak states where the formal institutions of representative democracy are flawed or inadequate. Through these multiple channels, ordinary people can express their demands on the state, pressure public officials, and hold elected representatives and governments accountable for their actions.

But raising public demands and expectations cannot work in isolation from other conditions. In terms of a responsive state, the capacity of institutions and processes of democratic governance within the state have to be strengthened to allow leaders to respond effectively to these demands. This is particularly critical in vulnerable states and post-conflict societies. Parliaments need to have a central role in poverty reduction plans and social welfare policies, to link voter’s concerns with elected representatives and the delivery of public services. The public sector, at national, regional and local levels, needs the capacity to respond to social needs for education, housing and health care, including using new information and communication technologies to overcome bottlenecks of service delivery. The justice system also serves an important role in this process, by maintaining the rule of law and property rights, and ensuring access to justice, especially for marginalized groups and sectors. The combination of inclusive participation by the poor with the expanded capacity in the responsive state can be regarded as necessary for promoting democratic governance and sustainable human development, ultimately helping to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.


Chapter 2: Citizen Community Boards and Social Audits in Pakistan

Patrick Keuleers

Governance reforms often stress the need to make the public administration more transparent, accountable and responsive to the demands of citizens. The latter are now to be seen in their roles as stakeholders, not just customers. These new approaches seek to translate citizens’ views and interests into public policy and to involve the public and local communities more directly in the allocation and management of public resources. This chapter analyzes these issues by focusing on Pakistan’s reform strategy for devolution, as well as the role of Citizen Community Boards and social audits in the reform process.

The reform process introduced in Pakistan illustrates the difficulties when moving from a closed and non-responsive administration towards a more inclusive form of local governance. Citizen involvement is given a new impetus through the operations of the Citizen Community Boards and the social audit process aims to incorporate their views more directly into the service delivery process. By providing tools and venues through which citizens can monitor and challenge their governments and at the same time take responsibility for their own initiatives, local communities are gradually becoming more empowered to contribute to the transparent, accountable and efficient conduct of public office. This process of reform has allowed community members and local governments to held meeting on an annual basis to establish priorities for community development. Such approaches offer opportunities to address the problems of exclusion and social disintegration in some of the most deprived communities. While the rates of satisfaction with social services remain very low, there are positive trend in other sectors that indicate that change is possible and that, with the necessary political will and sufficient resources, local citizens can be mobilized to change their own lives.

Nonetheless, the chapter warned us that the process of change is not automatic, nor is it guaranteed. Involvement of all stakeholders is a sine qua non for success. On one hand, the establishment of the Citizen Community Boards is instrumental in fostering the political culture shift from one of dependency and patronage to one of partnerships and self-development; on the other, government effectiveness - the quality of public bureaucracy, policy making and service delivery - remains an essential condition for success.

The role played by the social audit process remains, at this stage, somewhat uncertain. The importance of social audits should neither be overrated, nor underestimated. Traditionally, governments have associated performance monitoring and evaluation with the mandates of some core public sector agencies. The perspective of the recipients of government services has usually been absent in these settings. Participatory performance monitoring aims to add this missing link. But similar to the more traditional forms of inspection and auditing, their success depends on the extent that the information and insight generated also lead to remedial action. While politicians are well aware that people’s perceptions of the legitimacy of the state are shaped by the quality of the social services they receive, the fact that social services continue to be seen as deficient makes some observers doubt the cost-effectiveness of the social audit exercise.


Chapter 3: Civil Society and Social Accountability

Bharati Sadasivam and Bjøern Førde

New mechanisms of citizen engagement with state institutions have evolved in recent years to demand more accountability and inclusion. Concerns about accountability and legitimacy are being voiced by a wide spectrum of citizens in countries in both North and South, who increasingly share the view that there are problems about governance. Such concerns have catalyzed a new accountability agenda involving an ever-expanding cast of actors – ranging from intergovernmental bodies and bilateral and multilateral donor institutions to corporations and large transnational civil society networks.

The new direct forms of participatory governance are primarily concerned with restoring the right of citizens to participate in decisions that affect their lives. Participation in these new settings has raised the possibilities for citizen voice, influence and responsiveness. Rebuilding relationships between citizens and local government means going beyond civil society or state-based approaches, to focus on their intersection, through new forms of direct participation, responsiveness and accountability.

Increasingly, new forms of social accountability in which citizens engage with official accountability processes use a combination of strategies that pursue vertical channels (like protests, citizen mobilization and advocacy from the outside) and horizontal mechanisms (like participatory planning and audit exercises, participatory expenditure tracking, public hearings and alternative community-led approaches to service delivery). These new accountability mechanisms encompass a host of issues in diverse countries and contexts, and they cover the spectrum from awareness-raising and information-gathering to setting up alternative forms of service delivery to creating direct state-citizen accounting mechanisms.

The participatory budgeting and local governance initiatives examined in this chapter demonstrate the importance of state-civil society synergies in efforts at deepening democracy. They show civil society in roles that are neither an alternative to nor independent of the state. These citizen-led initiatives for state accountability and responsiveness resist casting the state and civil society as irreconcilable opposites, and they do not present civic action as a superior alternative to the state and the only means of addressing all manner of problems.

Moreover, they show civil society formations trying to bring about institutional accountability through a combination of approaches that target vertical accountabilities between citizens and the state, and horizontal accountabilities across public institutions. Success has been determined in part by the extent to which there has been consistent pressure from agencies of vertical accountability on state institutions to perform in responsive ways to the poor.


Chapter 4: Rights to information and the poor: experiences from India

Elizabeth McCall and Alexandra Wilde

Over the last twenty years the number of countries passing Right to Information laws has risen sharply. By mid-2006, at least sixty eight countries worldwide had established freedom of information laws, in states as diverse as Bulgaria, Germany, Mexico, Portugal, South Africa, Switzerland and the UK. What has been the impact of this global development? Can rights to information also have a significant impact upon human development and social equality, by empowering poor people and marginalized sectors of society to participate in public life?

To examine this issue, the study outlines some of the reasons for the rise of Right to Information laws around the globe then compares the experience of right to information in two states in India: Delhi and Orissa. The authors argue that laws guaranteeing access to public information function, under certain conditions, as an instrumental means of combating the social and political exclusion of poor people and marginalized groups, by enabling them to hold government officials to account and to improve service delivery. However, the basic conditions of democracy, rule of law, and respect for human rights need to be established, so that citizens have confidence that they can seek legal redress under Right to Information laws without fear of retaliation by the state. The comparison of the use of right to information by poor people in the Indian cases suggests that three key factors have largely determined their effectiveness, namely: the existence of strong intermediary groups (including civil society organizations and the media) to facilitate poor people’s interaction with government bureaucracy; recognition by the poor of a direct and sustained benefit from exercising their right to information; and the existence of political will on the part of the government officials to implement rights to information. Without these conditions being met, Freedom of Information laws are unlikely to prove effective.

The weak institutional and human capacity in many local government offices can act as a disincentive to provide information to the public. India’s right to information regime provides for the imposition of penalties on public officials (fines and disciplinary hearings). If systematically applied, disciplinary hearings can act as an important incentive as such hearings impact directly on career prospects and can affect long-term plans. Improving and simplifying public administration records, developing guidelines and establishing training programmes on right to information for public officials at all levels would help in addressing the lack of political will.

More research is needed to fully understand the link between a formal right to information, the empowerment of the poor, and its impact on human development. It is especially critical to debunk the myth that the right to information needs to wait for countries to reach a certain level of human or political development before implementation. Exercising the right to information itself contributes to the legitimate accounting of resources in the process of development. Effective anti-poverty programming requires accurate information on problems hindering development to be in the public domain.


Chapter 5: Mobilizing Voter Turnout: Nicaragua and Slovakia

Aleida Ferreyra, Linda Maguire, Noha El-Mikawy and Kango Lare-Lantone

Popular participation is fundamental to a vibrant democracy. Participation in electoral processes provides individuals with opportunities to choose representatives and to hold elected officials accountable. Many programs seeking to mobilize voters have targeted traditionally disadvantaged groups, such as women, ethnic minorities, the poor, young people, and those with disabilities. These programmes have aimed at creating a more representative, legitimate, and accountable governments. It is often believed that once all electors can choose representatives and parties reflecting their own concerns, this should generate parliaments and governments which serve the interests of all people, including the poor. Equal participation is thought to make governments responsive to all sectors of society.

Institutional, socioeconomic and political factors have now been widely identified as helping to explain cross-national variations in patterns of electoral participation. It is now well-established in a series of studies that certain institutional characteristics are closely associated with levels of turnout, including types of electoral systems, boundary delimitation and the closeness of competition, the use of compulsory voting, voter registration processes, and voting facilities such as access to polling stations and alternative voting procedures. These factors can provide higher or lower hurdles to getting citizens to the polls. Demographic characteristics such as age and gender also have a fairly predictable pattern, with younger voters usually less likely to participate than older citizens. By contrast, socioeconomic variations show different patterns, with the effects of income stronger in some societies than others. The competitiveness of the electoral process (at national and district levels) and the existence of social and political networks are also often associated with levels of turnout. Moreover, certain reforms have been recognized as ways that electoral bodies, parties, and civic associations can encourage greater electoral participation. Typically this includes civic education campaigns, grassroots movements, and educational programmes. The effect of these interventions needs careful analysis to identify the most effective options.