How can citizen mobilisation be supported to make local governance more inclusive and accountable in Nepal? This report from the Local Governance and Community Development Programme (LGCDP) analyses social mobilisation in Nepal. Transformational mobilisation processes are needed to build peoples’ capacity to actively participate in their own governance. Lessons learned include providing evidence of change in the ‘capability to demand’ and addressing obstacles in processes that target the disadvantaged by engaging the elites as ‘champions of the poor’.
The LGCDP is a national programme, which aims – among other things – to promote citizen engagement through social mobilisation. This report focuses on Outcome 1 of the LGCDP, which centres on empowering citizens and communities to actively engage with local government bodies and to hold them accountable.
Social mobilisation is used to refer to the types of group-based action that have been used over the past 25 years to support community-led development in Nepal. More specifically, social mobilisation denotes the process by which the critical link between citizen demand and state response is developed. The report also draws on the Gender and Social Exclusion Assessment’s framework of the domains of change, which include: (i) improved access to assets and services; (ii) changes in voice and agency; and (iii) changes in the rules of the game.
There are two main forms of social mobilisation: transactional and transformational. Most social mobilisation programmes rely on transactional approaches by focusing solely on the first domain of change (i.e. improved access to assets and services). However, real transformation and structural change requires action in all three domains of change. Analysis of a range of social mobilisation processes reveals the following key findings:
- Transformational approaches to citizen mobilisation are more sustainable than transactional processes and help to build individual and collective capabilities.
- There are significant challenges in identifying disadvantaged households. Community-based processes help to ensure buy-in and reduce resentment over the selection of targeted households; however, they are not sufficient for the identification of those in need of formal social protection.
- The extreme poor are left out or self-excluded from most group-based processes.
- There is a lack of graduation mechanisms to help the extreme poor and excluded access mainstream development opportunities.
- Most programmes do not link citizens/groups with local body processes. Group processes are generally isolated and parallel to local structures, and fail to strengthen state-citizen relationships.
The LGCDP represents a key opportunity to address inequitable development, which is a major cause of conflict in Nepal. However, there is a danger of exacerbating the conditions for conflict unless significant changes are introduced. Citizen mobilisation processes that are designed to achieve LGCDP Outcome One will build voice and demand, but this will only be effective if there is an appropriate response and an enabling environment to meet this demand. Efforts are therefore needed across the LGCDP’s three outcome areas.
To achieve LGCDP Outcome One, key recommendations include the following:
- Citizen mobilisers must be accountable to citizens and communities, but citizen mobilisation should be separate from local government.
- Social protection processes should be linked to citizen engagement processes.
- A combination of proxy means testing and a community-based process should be used for identifying and targeting disadvantaged households with independent verification.
- Planning processes for the whole Village Development Committee (VDC) should include all services, resources and block grants.
- LGCDP processes, guidelines, and strategies must be consistent and coherent, and based on a common understanding of citizen-centred local governance that delivers responsive services to citizens.
- A combined accountability and voice structure is needed at the national level. The operational implementation of citizen mobilisation should be carried out by a consortia of INGOs and NGOs working through local service providers.
