Because ‘voice and accountability’ is a broad term comprising several areas of donor intervention – including civic education, rights awareness, empowerment, democracy promotion and support to civil society and the media – the literature on tools and indicators for measuring the impact of development interventions on voice and accountability is highly fragmented. With the exception of the 2007 joint donor evaluation of voice and accountability by the Overseas Development Institute, there has been little attempt to develop distinct methodologies and combined indicators to measure the impact of these various types of donor interventions on voice and accountability.
This report includes three sections:
- Tools: This section includes examples of approaches to evaluating programmes that aim to impact on citizens’ voice and accountability. Theory-based approaches are prevalent, and there is some consensus about the value of participatory evaluation and mixed-methods designs combining surveys and interviews.
- Indicators: This section draws together some of the indicators used to measure the composite elements of voice and accountability – including access to information, budget oversight, local government financial accountability, and empowerment.
- Indexes: This section tables current/ongoing sources of national and local data (indexes) across the range of voice and accountability interventions. These indexes commonly draw on indicators of participation, budget transparency, access to information, freedom of the press, the status of women, and citizens’ views of the quality of democracy.
