This paper contributes to the body of knowledge on the role of political parties in promoting public accountability. It assesses how and to what extent the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy’s (NIMD) approach using Centres for Multiparty Democracy (CMD) as national platforms for and by political parties, assists political parties in their key roles between citizens and the state in enhancing public accountability.
It uses Kenya as a case study to explore the main constraints on public accountability and the extent to which cooperation between political parties and civil society has been enhanced. A new conceptual framework to differentiate between the roles of political parties in public accountability in four domains and three phases of the accountability process is used to assess the contribution of the Centre for Multiparty Democracy-Kenya (CMD-K).
Key findings:
- Public accountability is important in every society as it underpins the allocation and use of power. Political parties ideally fulfil essential intermediate roles between citizens and the state in every well-functioning multiparty democracy and are also the connection between the party system and the government.
- On the demand side of public accountability, that is, strengthening citizens in holding government to account for performance, behaviour and resource use, political parties can perform a number of roles. They can be involved in participatory checks and balances in implementation monitoring and evaluation of policies and public funds. They can also facilitate political and social debate among citizens and between citizens and politicians.
- On the supply side: political parties hold government to account on behalf of the electorate; they assist politicians in office to be more responsive and answerable to citizens’ needs; they influence policies by formulating programmes and by supervising policy implementation. Political parties also provide feedback to politicians and encourage learning by monitoring and evaluating policies.
- NIMD’s underlying assumptions with regard to the establishment and objectives of CMD-Kenya were that CMD-K would strengthen informal interparty dialogue, debate and cooperation on issues of national and party interest.
- Considering the fact that it was only set up in 2004, CMD-K has been relatively successful at initiating modest changes to some of the formal practices and policies of parties and to some extent to the behaviour of individual politicians.
- The main contribution of CDM-K is enhancing mutual trust between parties and strengthening politicians’ awareness of the value that parties have to add to a democratic society, by providing them with a platform that helps them to establish their identities as political parties.
- Societal trust in political parties was strengthened by organizing joint projects between parties and civil society actors and increasing interfaces between politicians and citizens, thereby strengthening the potential for enhancing public accountability in Kenya.
- The role of broker played by the CMD-K secretariat is essential in the relationship among parties as well as between parties and civil society. It safeguards a ‘neutral playing field’ where different visions, norms and practices can meet, and trust and respect for cooperation can grow on both sides.
- To play its role, the secretariat needs sufficient resources to execute projects and pay for the structural and institutional costs and investment in human resources. It also needs sufficient ‘neutral space’ to operate, and therefore a balanced board that is democratic but well-connected in terms of the party hierarchies and political leadership, as well as a balanced relationship with donors to safeguard local ownership of CMD-K.
- Strong, traditional, informal power relations, donor dependency, and problems of institutional governance and with managing multiple accountabilities on multiple levels place serious constraints on the functioning of CMD-K and therefore on its future influence and relevance.