How can citizens affect service delivery and accountability? This paper, from the University of Los Angeles, provides an overview of issues and experiences with diverse forms of community participation in the provision of services. Service provision arrangements linked to various forms of community participation may improve MDG-related outcomes. Community participation also affects public sector accountability at local, regional and national levels.
Widespread evidence shows that services are failing poor people in a large number of countries with negative impacts on human development outcomes. One key point is that the failure of services is not just technical, it is the result of the lack of accountability of public, private and non-profit organisations to poor people.
Through understanding the importance of the connections between participation, accountability and service delivery, as well as different aspects of context, experiences in community participation, is necessary.
- There are important connections between community participation and the key goals of allocative efficiency, technical efficiency, and improved mechanisms of accountability.
- Effective forms of community participation can create opportunities for more downward accountability and thus reduce the accountability gap between citizens and policymakers.
- Donors and international NGOs often substitute various short route mechanisms instead of investing in public systems or the sustainability of services in situations of weak governments, or humanitarian crises.
- Too great an emphasis on ‘community participation’ may idealise the internal coherence and solidarity in communities and miss the essential tasks of supporting effective public institutions.
- ‘Social capital’ is a useful concept but it is often applied uncritically with inadequate understanding of cultural and political context and vested interests in the status quo.
While there is no one ‘right path’ to how services should be delivered or ways in which community participation can be strengthened, lessons from experience can guide policymakers and civic organizations:
- Context matters and must be understood – including the relative heterogeneity of the population, the type of service and the spatial context. Moving to scale is likely to require an enabling public sector.
- Promotion of community participation strengthens the enabling environment and removes disabling factors.
- Promotion of processes of decentralisation takes many forms, and the resulting forms of participation will vary accordingly.
- Development of participatory processes is never separate from wider social, political contexts – some efforts by donors have foundered due to the attempt to ‘ring fence’ participatory mechanisms for power and politics.
- Increased transparency of community involvement with public sector agencies is required to improve accountability.
