What are the challenges to the legitimacy and accountability of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and how can these be addressed? This draft scoping report from the World Alliance for Citizen Participation (CIVICUS) and the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations analyses existing systems and practices for responding to these challenges. It suggests steps for developing systems to enhance the legitimacy and accountability of CSOs and multi-organisation domains.
Civil society can successfully challenge abuses by national governments, private firms, intergovernmental organisations, and trans-national corporations. But successful civil society response to questions about legitimacy and accountability can also lead to more collaborative initiatives between these actors to achieve local, national and global results. This can then form the basis for new models of governance and problem-solving that are desperately needed in a rapidly changing world.
The potential for CSOs to open up a space for debating issues and informing global public opinion can only be fulfilled if they respond to questions about their legitimacy and accountability. Key issues and a framework for understanding civil society legitimacy and accountability are outlined below:
- CSOs may be concerned about their legitimacy as institutions or with respect to particular issues. Four bases of legitimacy may be identified: legal; political; moral; and technical or performance legitimacy.
- CSOs are often accountable to many stakeholders and therefore not primarily accountable to any. Three important models of accountability for CSOs are: representative accountability, principal-agent accountability and mutual accountability.
- Accountability systems include: definitions of performance; identification of key stakeholders; approaches and standards for assessing performance; mechanisms for communicating those assessments; and vehicles for enabling CSO accountability to stakeholders.
- Standards can become established on the basis of general principles, societal ideals, through domain negotiated standards, or through organisational strategic choice. The last two of these offer arenas in which civil society actors can shape the terms of their accountability and legitimacy.
CSOs can construct organisational accountability systems that reinforce performance and mission accomplishment. They can also construct domain legitimacy and accountability systems, so that communities of organisations agree on standards, practices and relations with key stakeholders:
- Building organisational accountability systems involves: (1) identifying and prioritising organisational stakeholders; (2) setting standards and performance measures; (3) assessing and communicating performance results; and (4) creating performance consequences by which stakeholders can hold the CSO accountable.
- Constructing domain legitimacy and accountability systems involves: (1) defining the domain and its stakeholders; (2) negotiating standards, codes and performance measures; (3) creating domain implementation organisations; and (4) enabling performance consequences for domain actors and stakeholders.
- The second of these systems is more complicated than the first, because of the many independent organisations involved and the need to create new organisational arrangements to implement collective action.
- Ongoing dilemmas include: balancing power differences among stakeholders; measuring social performance; balancing high standards with space for continued innovation, diversity and responsiveness; and using organisational learning to catalyse domain and societal development.
