This report synthesises the findings of ten years of research from the Development Resource Centre on Citizenship, Participation and Accountability. Findings suggest that governments often become more capable, accountable and responsive when state-led reform to strengthen institutions of accountability and social mobilisation occur simultaneously. Further, change happens not just through strategies that work on both sides of the governance supply and demand equation, but also through strategies that work across them: it is important to link champions of change from both state and society.
Building responsive and accountable states without recognising and supporting the contributions of organised citizens will do little to promote sustainable change. Rights claims are socially and politically transformative, and citizen engagement can strengthen accountability frameworks and bolster state capability. For example, social movements create and hold open democratic spaces that create possibilities for reformers within the state to change and implement policy. The benefits of citizen action accumulate over time. However, citizen empowerment can also be converted to private gain, or be used to promote exclusion, and movements for accountability face their own accountability issues.
Beyond voting and participating in political parties, citizens use various – often multiple – strategies of engagement with the state. Citizens can engage with the state through:
- Grassroots associations and NGOs: Associations can socialise individuals into practising core civic and democratic values, and can be particularly important in fragile settings. However, what the association or NGO does and how it does it affects its democratising potential.
- State-sponsored participatory forums: The inclusivity and effectiveness of these forums is influenced by: legal and institutional variables; whether the design and management of the participatory process considers the cultures of excluded groups; the legacies of a country’s history of social mobilisation; and whether citizens mobilise to enter and use the forums.
- Self-organised social movements and campaigns: National policy change is facilitated by complex coalitions that link NGOs, social movements, faith-based groups, the media, intellectuals and others in deep-rooted mobilising networks. The role of mediators – individuals, organisations, or networks that link various actors in an accountable and collaborative way – is critical in holding together diverse movements for change.
When it works, engagement strengthens people’s sense of citizenship and contributes to more effective citizen practices, which in turn help to create more responsive and accountable states and more inclusive and cohesive societies. When it fails, however, engagement can lead to disempowerment, more clientelistic practices, a less responsive state and an increasingly divided society. The difference between the two is often a product of six factors:
- The institutional and political environment: This will strongly influence the strategies for citizen engagement that are possible.
- Citizen capabilities: To act, citizens need: self-confidence and a belief that they can have an impact; knowledge of their rights and legal entitlements, of state procedures and other civic issues; and skills such as how to hold meetings, organise petitions, litigate, network and raise media attention. Participation is the best way to improve citizens’ knowledge and skills.
- The strength of internal champions: Support for citizen engagement from influential officials significantly expands what can be accomplished.
- The history and style of engagement in the locality: Appropriate strategies require understanding of past forms of citizen action and of state responses.
- The nature of the issue and how it is framed: Where citizen demands are perceived to be within existing policy frameworks, they have a greater chance of being heard. Using international norms to frame demands can provide legitimacy, but can also backfire: emphasis on local and national norms might be preferable.
- A coordinated, multifaceted, and multilevel approach: Citizen engagement is most effective when it involves mutually-reinforcing, multiple strategies that affect multiple stages of the policy process. Diverse links are needed at and across different levels – from the local to the global.
Consideration of these six factors will help to identify context-appropriate strategies for citizen engagement. Further implications include the following.
NGOs and civil society actors need to:
- Assess the benefits and risks of various strategies of engagement: Forms of power and political analysis can be helpful.
- Develop clearer mediating and linking strategies: The impacts of mobilisation are strongly linked to the effectiveness and legitimacy of mediators who connect local and global actors, or civil society and state actors.
- Build the constituencies for change that can address a problem’s underlying causes over the long term.
Donors need to:
- Encourage both horizontal and vertical alliances for change
- Help to develop the security needed for citizen engagement – the freedom to participate without fear of reprisal, whether within the household or from the state
- Give citizen engagement more time, and recognise – and measure – the development of citizen awareness, efficacy and engagement as building blocks of aid effectiveness.
