THE OSLOGOVERNANCE FORUM

OUTCOME REPORT

3-5 OCTOBER 2011UNDP Oslo Governance Centre

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Design: QUO BangkokCopy editors: Gert Danielsen and Tom Woodhatch

UNDP Disclaimer: The views expressed in this publication are the authors’and do not necessarily represent those of the United Nations, includingUNDP, or its Member States.

For further information please contact: United Nations Development ProgrammeBureau for Development PolicyDemocratic Governance Group304 East 45th Street, 10th Fl.New York, NY 10017

Oslo Governance CentreInkognitogata 37, 0256 Oslo, Norway

www.undp.org/governancewww.undp.org/oslocentrewww.gaportal.org

Copyright © 2012 by the United Nations Development Programme.All rights reserved.

CONTENTS

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Democratic governance and social accountability

New applications of governance assessments

The Oslo principles of democratic governance assessments

Principle 1: Promote country ownership of governance processes and assessments

Principle 2: Strengthen the ability of people to hold their government to account

Principle 3: Apply a rights-based approach

Principle 4: Strengthen governments’ capability to be responsive

Principle 5: Strengthen accountability across government

Principle 6: Promote and protect space for citizens and civil society organizations to participate Principle 7: Commit to transparency and access to information

Principle 8: Encourage a culture of evidence-based policy-making

Principle 9: Embed the governance assessment in political realities

Principle 10: Align with national development priorities and political vision

Principle 11: Support democratic governance assessments at the local level

Conclusions

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The events of this year lend deep signifi cance to the Oslo Governance Forum. Since the beginning of 2011, millions of people have participated in movements for democracy and better governance. Millions more have followed withintense interest as dramatic and often inspiring changes have been set inmotion. The issues you have come together to discuss are critical to supporting and underpinning the eff orts of these movements as they strive to turn their aspirations and early achievements into a working, lasting reality.Ban Ki-moon Secretary-General, United Nations

How can governments be made more accountable to citizens? How cangovernance assessments contribute to citizens’ empowerment and moreresponsive, democratic governance? These are among the highly topicalissues discussed at the Oslo Governance Forum.Olav Kjorven Assistant Secretary-General and Director of the Bureau of Development Policy, UNDP

The world is changing fast around us: when tomorrow comes, today will be yesterday! Brazil and Indonesia may have more to teach many a West European or North American country right now about how to build strong coalitions for sustained, transformative change than the other way around. Countries widely thought to be stable have turned out not to be. Social networks and media create new dynamics with their own challenges and opportunities. But the climate and inequality crises are worsening in most countries, not improving. What does it all suggest for our governance work?

The OGF catapulted UNDP to a new and strategic leadership role. It enabled us to listen and to understand the innovative work contributed by some of the most inspiring civil society activists in India, Egypt, Tunisia, Uganda, Brazil and other countries across the world.Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi Practice Director, Democratic Governance, UNDP

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This report records the vibrant and dynamic discussions held at the Oslo Governance Forum (OGF) from 1 to 3 October 2011, and the ‘Oslo Principles’ endorsed by the Forum. More than 270 policy makers, experts and practitioners from 75 countries gathered to participate in the OGF. It was convened by the UNDP’s Democratic Governance Group, in partnership with a broad coalition of stakeholders,including UNDEF, ActionAid, Act Alliance, PRIA, the World Bank Institute and NORAD. Its success testifi es to theinnovative and cost-eff ective organization of a global advocacy event. It creates a global venue, one that canenhance UNDP’s credibility and capacity to play a transformational leadership role at the global level. Participants rigorously debated the principles and implications underpinning democratic governance assessments. As Bishop Atle Sommerfeldt, former Secretary-General of the Norwegian Church Aid and leader of ACT Alliance, said: “the OGF helped reposition UNDP strategically as a global leader in building knowledge and policy discourse and networks through a multi-stakeholder process, through co-convening and co-organizing the event.” The key issue of debate was how democratic governance processes and institutions could be renewed for a new era. The Forum drew inspiration from the words of President Nelson Mandela: “In taking on the transformationof [South African] society our goal was to banish hunger, illiteracy and homelessness. Our goal was also to ensurethat everyone had access to food, education and housing. We saw freedom as truly inseparable from humandignity and equality. While poverty persists together with exclusion, there can be no true freedoms.” UNDP clearly has a critical and broadly recognized role to play in the global eff ort to strengthen people’sparticipation in the aff airs of state and governance, building capacities and institutions that can eff ectivelyprotect their rights and propel inclusive human development. The OGF enabled UNDP to listen and to grasp theinnovative work contributed by some of the most inspiring civil society activists from India, Egypt, Tunisia, Uganda, Brazil and other countries across the world. In the words of Erik Solheim, then Norwegian Minister of Development and Environment, “we need to transform the current aid eff ectiveness discourse and North-South aid paradigm towards a broader, more inclusive, iterative and dynamic development eff ectiveness paradigm.” The former minister pointed to the importance of developingtools and approaches that create policy space for decision-making for the long term in order to address ourmajor crises: climate change and staggering economic disparities.

Aruna Roy, a leader of Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sanghathan, a social movement in India, highlighted the role of the poor, marginalized and excluded people in strengthening democratic governance with transformationalpolitics in public policy spaces. She described how grassroots innovations by poor people, in the campaign for the right to information and social audit in India, could play a transformative role in ensuring inclusive participationand capacity to infl uence policies. She made a plea for expanding the voice and space of the poorest peoplein democratic governance.

FOREWORD

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Thomas Carothers, Vice President at the Carnegie Endowment, captured the challenges that democracy and the current aid paradigm present in the early 21st century. All too often, he said, democracy becomes its own worst enemy. This calls for renewed efforts to revitalize and democratize governance at the local, national and global levels The Forum’s substantive content emerged in the form of a book Making the State Responsive, which brought together analytical papers and nine case studies from Africa, Asia and Latin America. The rich mix of participants greatly facilitated a thoughtful and challenging debate on the role of measurement, data and participatory processes in strengthening social accountability mechanisms. The Forum heard inspiring stories from the Arab Awakening. It was exposed to innovative approaches to anti-corruption programming and to bold visions for assessments in the REDD+ framework, plus other case studies from distinguished speakers from across the globe. Throughout the Forum’s three days, participants debated the merits of the Oslo Principles and their potential impact on the normative agenda for democratic governance.

I would like to thank Actionaid, Act-Alliance, PRIA-Global Partnership, UNDEF and the World Bank, who worked closely with the Oslo Governance Centre in organizing the OGF. I would like to express our immense appreciation to all the speakers and participants who enriched the debates and greatly contributed to the forum’s success. The Oslo Governance Centre team played an invaluable role in organizing the forum. In particular, the leadership provided by John Samuel (Democratic Governance Advisor for Governance Assessments), along with the Policy Advisors in DGG New York who helped greatly in mobilizing the spectrum of social networks and the diverse constituencies.

One important lesson learned in organizing the OGF was that UNDP has enormous potential to play a global leadership role by evolving new synergies between the multi-stakeholder processes and venues at the global level. Through its Oslo Governance Centre, UNDP is well positioned to fill a key niche by convening a space that brings together researchers and practitioners from a truly global constituency. I hope that the overwhelming positive response and discussions at OGF will help us to move forward with a new sense of momentum. The OGF report will inevitably fall short of doing full justice to the impressive range of experiences, but the hope is that it may serve as a knowledge resource, highlighting a sample of good practices – one for each of the Oslo Principles. These practices showcase the principles’ strategic and normative validity and how they may contribute to making real and positive differences to peoples and communities around the world.

Geraldine Fraser-MoleketiPractice Director

Democratic Governance GroupUNDP

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The organizing partners of the Oslo Governance Forum would like to thank Olav Kjorven, Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, John Samuel for coordinating, Paul van Hoof for writing this report and the following people who all contributed to the organization of the Forum listed in alphabetical order: Asmara Achcar, Kulan Amin, Kristian Andersen, Bård Anders Andreassen, Aida Arutyunova, Kaustuv Bandyopadhyay, Gwen Berge, Jose Eliel Camargo,Tim Clairs, Lorenzo Delesgues, Vidar Ellingsen, Javier Fabra, June Fylkesnes, Helene Gallis, Tina Hageberg,Julia Hauserman, Goran Hyden, Danae Issa, Praveen Jha, Bo Jensen, Torni Iren Johansen, John Jones, JamshedKazi, Nina Kolybashkina, Marie Laberge, Marta Lagos, Giske Lillehammer, Sarah Lister, Phil Matzheza, ClaudiaMelim-Mcleod, Joachim Nahem, Ingvild Oia, Trygve Olfarnes, Mark Orkin, Sujala Pant, Darko Pavlovic, MariePersson, Shireen Said, Marianne Opheim Sampo, John Samuel, Annika Savill, Ashish Singh, Petter Skjaeveland,Atle Sommerfeldt, Rajesh Tandon, Njoya Tikum, Anga Timilsina, Alexandra Wilde, Christopher Wilson.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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In 2011, the demand for democracy and better governance reached the streets of Tunis, Homs, Yangon,Washington and many other cities across the world. Millions of people participated in movements for democracy and better governance. Not only have they demanded democracy in countries where democracy has not beenwell established, but they have also called for a renewal of democratic governance processes and institutionsfor inclusive development and growth in countries with long established democratic traditions.

From 3-5 October 2011, UNDP’s Oslo Governance Centre, together with UNDEF, ActionAid, ActAlliance, PRIA,the World Bank Institute and NORAD, organized the Oslo Governance Forum. The Forum brought together270 policy makers, experts and practitioners from more than 75 countries to discuss, from various perspectives,the core question of how to renew democratic governance processes and institutions for a new era. Or, in thewords of Olav Kjorven, Assistant Secretary-General and Director of the Bureau of Development Policy, UNDP, “How can governments be made more accountable to citizens? How can governance assessments contribute tocitizens’ empowerment and more responsive democratic governance?”

The Forum provided a space for discussions on the role of democratic governance assessments in developinganti-corruption policies, improving public service delivery, climate change mitigation strategies, post-crisisrecovery processes and in promoting democratic change processes in general. These issues are not justfundamental for the nascent democracies now struggling to take shape, they are crucial to societies further intheir transition.

The Norwegian Minister for Development and the Environment, Erik Solheim, who participated in the Forum,remarked that democracy has gained a moral victory over more totalitarian systems in recent decades, becausemost states now have some form of electoral democracy. But the problem lies in the effi ciency of democratic rule.It has to prove that it serves the people better than other systems. If it does not, it will lose in the long run.

INTRODUCTION

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Democracy has gained a moral victory, but the problem is the effi ciencyof democratic rule; it has to serve the people better than any other system.If not, in the long run it will lose.Erik Solheim Minister of Development and Environment , Norwegian Government

In this century, democracy has to answer its own worst enemy,the ability to provide eff ective and responsive services. Thomas Carothers Vice President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Solheim went on to say that this ability of democratic systems to deliver to all and to be accountable to its citizens matters more than ever before, perhaps in part because people demand more these days, and mobilize more easily thanks to social media. But the fundamental reason is found in the current financial climate and governmental crisis. Governance is being assessed more than ever before. Since late 2010, the events in the Arab world, in Spain, Greece, the United Kingdom or the United States of America, be it the Tea Party or Wall Street, are all essentially governance assessments. People have assessed governance in their country, and have not liked what they have seen. Democratic states therefore need to build better mechanisms for responsiveness, and to address unfairness, incompetence and ineffectiveness.

Governance assessments have acquired an increasingly significant role in helping to analyse, understand and influence democratization and development processes in multiple contexts. Assessments have the potential to correct governance deficits and to improve governments’ responsiveness and performance. The question is whether they are, in practice, actually contributing to social change processes or whether they are merely used as window dressing to satisfy donor demands.

Governance assessments that focus on strengthening social accountability can play an important role in these processes, because they give people information on the state of governance. Increasingly, they also provide a platform for government and citizens to deliberate and tackle these shortcomings collectively. It is not surprising that such new forms of deliberative democracy have emerged where governments have been hard pushed to provide even the most basic social services to its people. Most case studies presented at the Forum came from such countries. They contain valuable lessons in participatory democracy. They offer much to ‘developed’ countries, particularly for the way they show that active citizens are – practically and constructively – able to make their governments more transparent and accountable.

The objective of this report is to share some of these rich experiences by presenting a summary of the Forum’s main deliberations and conclusions. Futhermore by linking the 11 ‘Oslo Principles on Democratic Governance Assessments’ (adopted at the end of the Forum) to a selection of cases, each highlighting one of those principles, this report also aims to illustrate how these principles can be operationalized and thereby contribute to better governance and, particularly, to improved social accountability.

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DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCEAND SOCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY

Defi nition

What does Democratic Governance and Social Accountability mean in the context of the Forum? Presenters off ered their own defi nitions:

GovernanceDr. Rajesh Tandon, President of the Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA) in India, said that “governance is a combination of structures and processes of decision-making for mobilization and utilization of public resourcesin common public goods.

“Therefore, both institutional structures – such as systems, procedures and rules – and the manner of decision-making are critical to an understanding of governance. Who is authorized and mandated to make a decision, and how they make that decision, are both important.”

Holding government accountable is not only better for citizens,but makes government more moral and effi cient. Mark Orkin Advisor, South African Network Society Survey

When I send my son to the market with 10 rupees, I will ask for account,and when the government spends billions of dollars, I will ask for account. Aruna Roy Founder of Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), India

For the poor, the demand for accountability is not only for service delivery,but also for their political and social rights that they wish to see ensured. Shaheen Anam Executive Director, Manusher Jonno Foundation, Bangladesh

An enabling environment for governance assessments is important,but the governments cannot give it; the CSOs have to claim it.Andrew Firmin Research Manager Civicus

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“Likewise, it is important to consider not just how resources are utilized – money, land, forest, water infrastructure, equipment, technology, human capacities, and so on – but also how they are mobilized. So taxation, ownership of natural resources and historical buildings, for example, are as important as budgeting, programming, legislating and using such resources.”

“Finally, establishment of common public goods have to be agreed in the public domain. This may differ from place to place, and between communities. The priorities of citizens may also vary over time.”

Democratic GovernanceGöran Hydén, Professor Emeritus at the University of Florida, defined democratic governance as “the incorporation of universally recognized values in the process of managing public affairs. It is what citizens and their governments do to make the rules of the political game acceptable and legitimate in the eyes of as many stakeholders as possible.”

Social AccountabilityAngelita Gregorio-Medel, Executive Director of Affiliated Network for Social Accountability (ANSA) East Asia and the Pacific, sees social accountability as “constructive engagement multiplied by citizen monitoring raised to the power of advocacy. There are four pillars that create an enabling environment for social accountability:

1. Organized and capable citizens2. Responsive governments3. Access to information4. Context and cultural appropriateness

Trends in democratic governance and democratic governance assessments

The Forum’s plenary opening sessions focussed on giving participants a general framework and an overview of recent trends in democratic governance and democratic governance assessments.

The challenges that democratic countries, and democracy as a political system, face today are different from those in the previous century. Although states and governments are increasingly interdependent and ideological distinctions have diminished, the differences within countries between the haves and have-nots, between the small group of people who benefit from the current socio-economic and political configurations and the majority that does not, have grown and have become more visible and recognized. While there are differences in the absolute level of poverty of a poor person in the USA and in India, the mechanisms of exclusion and the awareness of the injustice of this system are the same. “Inclusive and sustainable growth,” said Minister Erik Solheim, “is the most important question not only for developing but also for developed countries.”

The financial and climate crises illustrate how difficult it can be to balance short- and long-term interests. Increased governmental responsiveness to the demands of citizens and the legitimacy of those demands could jeopardize the interests of future generations. What we need, according to Thomas Carothers, Vice President of Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, is “not necessarily more accountability, but a deeper accountability towards the future” and “to strengthen all parts of civil society that are concerned with future goals”.

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Gwen Berge, head of the thematic advisory division of Norwegian Church Aid, however, noted that while there is recognition of civil society’s role in democratic governance, the political space for civil society in many countries is shrinking instead of growing, particularly in Africa as the ACT Alliance reports document.

On the role of citizens and social movements in strengthening democratic practices, Aruna Roy, founder of Mazdoor Kisan Shakthi Sanghatan (MKSS-India), made several valuable contributions. She showed that poor people have power in numbers, and that once they become aware of their rights and are organized, they will demand more transparency and accountability from their government. For this to happen, financial audits need to be complemented by social audits conducted by people themselves, monitoring whether services are delivered in line with expected standards.

Irene Ovonji Odida, chair of ActionAid International, described the complexity of linking these grassroots initiatives to more sustainable and structural changes that are required at the nexus of political and economic power from the perspective of women’s empowerment. While women as individuals are increasingly securing senior positions in politics and economics, there is a lack of networking and relationship-building between women inside and outside these spaces. Better women’s leadership and constituency-building between women leaders and their constituencies are therefore required. She noted that, “governance is about linking democracy and development, which requires sustained engagement of civic actors and a constant push towards the power institutions to insist that leaders are accountable to citizens. That is the social contract. That is the core.”

Numerous speakers noted an ongoing change in the demand for governance assessments. The role of development aid in improving democratic governance has also changed over the years. Improved governance, in practice often translated as reduced corruption, started as a donor requirement mainly to ensure that their funds were used properly. It is now understood that such external accountability has, in practice, damaged domestic accountability relationships. Fortunately, this has changed not only because nations themselves are much more in control of ODA expenditure, but also because there has been more internal demand for accountability from government at various levels in recent decades. UNDP has played an important role in bridging the external demand for better governance with a country-led approach to strengthening domestic accountability.

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In part a result of these changes in the global democratic governance context, democratic governance assessments have also evolved.1 Several trends were noted by presenters, most of these trends will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 3 using practical case studies:

1. There has been a move from global level (cross country) assessments to country level (national and sub-national) or context-specific assessments such as the African Peer Review mechanism.

2. From externally triggered assessments, contributing to “choiceless democracies” (in the words of Adebayo Olukoshi at the Forum) and the erosion of domestic policy space, there has been a shift to more internally triggered and country-owned assessments.2

3. There have also been changes in the methodology, including a shift from the exclusive use of numeric indicators (statistics) to more narrative trajectories (stories) to understand motivational factors, and from quantitative to qualitative methods. 4. An ongoing trend to integrate a political economy analysis in the assessment aims to understand why institutions are, or are not, benefitting people. There is also an improved understanding of interactions between formal and informal institutions in the process of resource allocation, along with greater awareness that governance programmes fail because of the false assumption that reforms should focus on the functioning formal institutions only. Governance assessments are not politically neutral technical exercises, but processes with political implications.3

5. Probably the most important shift now taking place is from top-down assessments (dictating what is good for you) to bottom-up and participatory approaches that stress collective learning and target setting from the local level upwards. It is this shift to more bottom-up approaches in which hearings, social audits and other mechanisms are integrated and trigger improved social accountability that sees citizens acting together to hold their government to account.4

6. There is an increased emphasis on monitoring government policy implementation, not just monitoring the way that representative democracy functions.5

7 Recent years have seen an increased use of ICT in governance assessments. This makes them cheaper, enables real-time results, and allows interactive and continuous assessments, resulting in increased ownership of the assessment by the users.6

1 For more detailed description and analysis of these trends in governance assessments, see: Göran Hyden and John Samuel, eds, (2011): Making the state responsive; experience with democratic governance assessments, UNDP. 2 See paragraph 3.2 for more detail on this shift towards more national ownership of assessments.3 See case 9 on embedding the assessments in political realities.4 See paragraph 3.7 on promoting space for citizens to participate in democratic governance assessments.5 See paragraph 3.3 on strengthening the ability of people to hold their government to account.6 See paragraph 3.8 on committing to transparency and access to information.

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Governance assessment tools are at the forefront where the governancefi eld is, which in turn is on the edge of where democracy is.Thomas Carothers Vice President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

As well as addressing the relevance of governance assessments in promoting democratic governance andanalysing recent trends in governance assessments, the Oslo Governance Forum discussed the application ofgovernance assessments from thematic perspectives. This took place both in plenary and parallel sessions, thelatter considering their innovative applications.

While governance assessments have been, and continue to be, used to measure the state of governance from amore holistic perspective at various levels of government, there are many new and innovative applications ofgovernance assessments with a sectoral or thematic focus. These new applications have emerged in sectors wherepolicy makers and practitioners realized that bad governance was a core factor in obstructing social change.As case studies show, however, the implications of assessing governance to better understand the dynamicsof the sector often contributed to a complete redesign of intervention strategies, focussing much more onmobilizing the change potential of citizens themselves to bring about social change.

The role of governance assessment in REDD+ and natural resources management

Deforestation and forest degradation, through for example agricultural expansion, conversion to pastureland,infrastructure development, destructive logging and fi res, account for nearly 20 percent of global greenhouse gasemissions. That is more than the entire global transportation sector and second only to the energy sector. Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) is an eff ort to create fi nancial value for the carbon storedin forests, off ering incentives for developing countries to reduce emissions from forested lands and to invest inlow-carbon paths to sustainable development. REDD+ goes beyond deforestation and forest degradation toinclude conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks.

Sustainable forest management depends on the quality of governance of these natural resources. There is oftencompetition between diff erent interests and a wide variety of stakeholders who are using these forest resources. These may range from large legal and illegal fi nancial interests on the one hand, to the bare survival of ethnic minoritieson the other. Country-specifi c and country-owned management and governance structures are needed to dealwith the complexity of confl icting interests.

REDD+ will support eff ective and transparent governance structures in countries that wish their actions forREDD+ to be acknowledged by the convention. Strengthening citizens’ voices and the engagement of civil society,

NEW APPLICATIONS OFGOVERNANCE ASSESSMENTS

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along with traditional forms of support to develop state systems and institutions, are crucial to establishing responsive governance mechanisms.

One of the first activities of REDD+ in a participating country is a Participatory Governance Assessment (PGA). This helps to gain insight into the quality of governance affecting forest management.

The PGA aims to enhance democratic governance at the country level, underpinned by the development of data that are measurable over time, and contribute to improved policy making. It also provides critical accountability mechanisms and offers superior data for evidence-based policy making. By ensuring that the ownership of the assessment process lies with national (and sub-national) partners, it is expected that capacities at these different levels will be strengthened. For the first time, relevant data for forest management will be collected by involving stakeholders directly, while the results will be made public and available to all stakeholders. That will help to increase transparency in the forestry sector – an essential first step in improving accountability.

The PGA adds value in many ways:

• Stakeholders identify information that is relevant – there is no prescriptive formula as the process is highly context-specific. • The process is undertaken by a national partner, and findings and recommendations are more likely to be followed up. • The assessment is not undertaken to fulfil an external demand, but to enhance governance and to increase domestic accountability. Citizens can also use it as a tool to advocate for change. • Typically, a multi-stakeholder platform is established, with representatives from government, civil society organizations (CSOs), forest-dependent communities, academia, and the media. • Improved quality of, and access to, information is critical for improved transparency and accountability, which play a key role in turn for the success of REDD+. Equal access to information helps to create a level playing field in negotiations for new governance structures for forest management.

Gaining insight into, and sharing knowledge of, the quality of governance is a crucial starting point for REDD+. But creating space for (and developing the capacities of ) communities, ethnic minorities and CSOs to play an effective role in the governance process that will lead to social change will ultimately determine the extent to which REDD+ will be successful.

The role of governance assessment in strengthening public service delivery

Governance assessments, when well incorporated into the larger governance framework, can contribute to increasing both accountability and efficiency in the delivery of public services.

Several case studies have shown that improving social accountability for service delivery can be cost effective, especially by establishing ‘consumer movements’ to monitor public service delivery. These can be effective if grassroots’ concerns drive the selection of what needs to be assessed. To be more widely effective, it is important to strengthen the capacities of the ‘missing middle’, of media, academia and local governments, who should connect. Dr. Rajesh Tandon, president of PRIA, stressed the critical role of voice in governance and social accountability. Voice is a product of adequate information and collective organization-building. He expressed concern that especially the latter seems to be failing, or has not been sustainable over the last decade. Improving the demand for accountability and improved services will not work unless the capacity at the supply side (especially lower level government) to address these issues adequately is also tackled. If this happens, further devolution in the allocation of public resources can take place, enabling frontline service providers not just to deliver better services, but also to be truly accountable.

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Examples of (local) governance assessment tools presented during the Forum – particularly those that focus on the relationship between governance and improved service delivery – suggest that they are much more than simple assessment tools. They have increasingly become awareness-raising exercises and capacity development tools for local governance stakeholders, while they also create a platform for open and equal dialogue and for collective learning on governance and service delivery.

Practical recommendations were made on how governance assessments can further contribute to improved public service delivery:

• With the emergence of public-private partnerships in the delivery of basic services, the private sector should be incorporated as a fully-fledged actor in governance assessments; • Effective, high quality public services need to stem from equal assessments of the demand side, through social accountability, and of the supply side for strengthened delivery capacity and efficiency; • Regional/supra-national and local levels should be assessed jointly with the national level so that service delivery can be equitable, sustainable and efficient; • Equity needs to be first practically defined with regard to the context to which it applies, with regard to the services in question, their recipients, the delivery method and the deliverers; • Assessments need to be complemented and followed up on by organizing, campaigning, engaging, and pressing.

The role of governance assessment in anti-corruption strategies

It became clear from the presentations that apart from a few good individual cases, governance assessments of anti-corruption have in general not yet reached the stage of direct citizen participation. They are still more focused on improving the institutional infrastructure than on improving social accountability.7 Corruption perception indices make use of expert opinion and rarely include the views of ordinary citizens. It was also noted that the capacities of civil society at various levels in society to monitor and share information on procurement processes is still very limited.

The need for civil society and other non-state actors to be involved in the country-level implementation of the United Nations Convention on Anti-Corruption was emphasized. However, that implementation is an inter-governmental process and the involvement of non-state actors can therefore be a challenge. So the onus is on member states to involve other actors. They are being encouraged to achieve that by making reports more widely available and making use of voices outside the public sector.

There is a clear benefit in locating anti-corruption strategies within sectors central to development practitioners and to people’s lives. Corruption in sectors is where the poor are actually hit. Examples from countries such as India and Nigeria illustrate the concrete gains that can be made by engaging citizens in anti-corruption actions in sectors, even for the procurement sector that is inherently more technical.

Establishing ownership to ensure effective multi-stakeholder engagement, including different user groups, was considered essential for effective anti-corruption action and was particularly illuminated by the UNDP study on education. The need to systematically analyse and apply effective anti-corruption instruments at different levels in a sector, and have both a participatory bottom-up and top-down approach, was seen as essential if visible and measurable progress was to be achieved.

7 See, for instance, Case 7 on the commitment to transparency and information.

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The role of governance assessment in political transition and post-conflict countries

Assessing the state of governance is particularly important in fragile or post-conflict countries. Assessments can help to identify critical weaknesses in the governance system that require priority attention to prevent a potential slide back into conflict. Several participants argued for the development of MDG-like measures of progress for peace and state-building. This was something that received a good deal of attention at the Busan High-level Forum in December 2011, where a number of countries and international organizations endorsed “A new deal for engagement in fragile states”.

Various factors make governance assessments particularly complicated in fragile and post-conflict countries:

• Absence of globally agreed MDG-like measures for progress; • Extended timeframes for institutional change, often spanning decades; • A dual accountability dilemma, resulting from an expectation of quick results by both national actors for policy-making and international agencies for programming; • Limited national statistical capacity and lack of systematic data collection; • Capacity of civil servants limited by conflict to monitor and evaluate; • Cooperation among stakeholders is lacking due to absence of trust; • Confinement and reduced freedom of movement create obstacles to the normal functions of government; • Corruption is widely prevalent and is destroying a country’s ability to move forward; and • Coherence of national interests can be hard to achieve, because of religious and ethnic divisions and the specific interests of various groups, along with an inadequate dialogue between the international community and the nation.

It is important, therefore, that governance assessments in these settings focus on:

• Measurements that contribute to institution-building; • Enhanced national capacities for conflict mapping, analysis and transformation; • Sharing information as widely as possible to avoid data being used in latent conflicts; and • Strategic areas and themes that require urgent action, not demanding everything at the same time.

Recommendations include:

• A measure of what the people think about the elites should form a basis for recommendations of changes that should be made; • The measurement, the intervention itself, changes the process. Assessors are not just statisticians, who are gathering data; we are involved in the process; • Assessments should be developed to address the aspects of violence in an occupation, e.g., Palestine and international presence in Iraq; • There is a need for good sub-national measurements, particularly where there are pockets of violence in countries that are otherwise considered stable; • There is a need to boost south-south cooperation; and • A refinement and contextualization of the fragility index is required. Countries that can be described as post-conflict at the national level might still be facing conflict at the sub-national level.

Most speakers acknowledged that strengthened institutions and active citizenry, with designated dialogue spaces for the interaction between the citizens and the state, are critical to post-conflict recovery and progress.

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THE OSLO PRINCIPLES OF DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE ASSESSMENTS

Introduction

One of the Oslo Governance Forum’s most important outcomes was the formulation and acceptance of the 11principles of democratic governance assessment. These principles have been drafted for the consideration ofpractitioners, promoters and supporters of democratic governance, including governments, donor agencies,international organizations, civil society, citizen groups, and media.

The Oslo Principles is a statement designed to promote and strengthen democratic governance at the localand national levels. The principles are also expected to serve as a reference point and guide for institutions andpractitioners in monitoring, assessing and analysing governance.

Democratic governance means that people’s human rights and fundamental freedoms are respected, promotedand fulfi lled, enabling them to live with dignity. People have a say in decisions that aff ect their lives and canhold decision-makers to account, based on inclusive and fair rules, institutions and practices that governpolitical, economic and social interactions. Women are equal partners with men in the private and publicspheres of life and decision-making, and all people are free from discrimination based on race, ethnicity, class, genderor any other attribute. Democratic governance feeds into economic and social policies that are responsive topeople’s rights and aspirations, that aim at eradicating poverty and expanding the choices that people have intheir lives, and that respect the rights of future generations.

The 11 Principles

1. Promote country ownership of governance processes and assessmentIt is important to support multi-stakeholder approaches, political settlements and consensus-building in order to broaden ownership of democratic reform. At the same time, it should be recognized that such broad ownership cannot be assumed in advance, but may be considered a positive outcome of a governance assessment process.It is acknowledged that citizens and social groups may have diff erent interests, but that the participatory processof governance assessments can help to overcome challenges posed by acting collectively.

2. Strengthen the ability of people to hold their governments to accountIndicators and assessment results should serve to strengthen individual and group claims for better governance performance. It is important to recognize that disseminating assessment results is not suffi cient, and thatstrengthening the ability of citizens – and especially the poor, indigenous people, and other marginalized groups – to hold their governments to account should be integral to the assessment process from start to fi nish.This means deliberately choosing communication and dissemination methods and media that are relevant tomarginalized groups, as well as strengthening economic and statistical literacy, raising understanding of issues, making information meaningful and accessible, and allowing genuine participation in decision-making.

3. Apply a rights-based approach Governance assessments need to generate information and analysis that can help us to understand and address the issues of poverty, deprivation and exclusion, and promote a gender-sensitive approach to public policy and governance. The rights and interests of poor, vulnerable people, women and other marginalized groups must be taken into account when collecting and presenting governance evidence, as well as in its use.

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4. Strengthen governments’ capacity to be responsiveThe capacity of governments to promote governance indicators as essential tools for benchmarking results and managing performance should be strengthened. National and local actors and institutions should be helped to produce independent assessments and ensure that there is regular information-sharing and communication of governance targets and data.

5. Strengthen accountability across governmentAcknowledging that checks and balances are essential for deepening democratic governance, indicators and governance evidence should support the work of parliaments and independent horizontal accountability institutions, including anti-corruption agencies, ombudsman offices, and human rights institutions.

6. Promote and protect space for citizens and civil society organizations to participateAn enabling environment that respects human rights, particularly freedom of expression and freedom of assembly and association, is essential for carrying out democratic governance assessments.

7. Commit to transparency and access to informationGovernance assessments need to be transparent and publicly available so that stakeholders and citizens have access to the results, methodologies and processes. It is important to recognize that the innovative use of information and communication technologies has the potential to reduce barriers to citizen participation in governance processes, and present novel opportunities for data collection, dissemination and coordination.

8. Encourage a culture of evidence-based policy-makingFostering a culture of evidence-based policy-making requires a critical mass of participants. Enabling groups to engage in evidence-based debate requires support of their ability to produce, evaluate and use evidence. Attention should therefore be given to strengthening the capacity of academics, communities of practice, networks, think-tanks, research institutes, civil society (social movements, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and community-based organizations (CBOs), national statistical offices, in-depth journalism and government administration.

9. Embed the assessment in political realitiesA deepened political economy analysis will help to ensure the contextual relevance of assessments. Governance is a complex process involving multiple institutions at different levels. It is important to recognize that reforming governance is an ongoing socio-political process rather than a technical fix. Assessments, therefore, need to transcend narrow project objectives, and be undertaken with the acknowledgement that they are both a technical and political process.

10. Align with national development priorities and political visionAn assessment should be based on priorities and reform processes that are defined by citizens, their organizations and national stakeholders. These may manifest themselves in the form of development plans and sector strategies or in more deep-rooted processes that strengthen democratic governance, widen political space, and consolidate peace.

11. Support democratic governance assessments at the local levelLocal governance assessments should not be a translation or simplification of national level assessments. Assessments at the local level need to include a focus on the capacities of local government institutions to respond to local needs as well as the capacities of citizens to hold local government institutions to account.

These 11 principles are not vague ideas of how democratic governance assessments should be implemented in the future, but are already applied in many of the assessments that were presented at the Oslo Governance Forum. In the next 11 chapters each of these principles is explained in more detail and illustrated by practical application, using some of the innovative case studies that were presented at the Forum.

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PRINCIPLE 1: PROMOTE COUNTRY OWNERSHIPOF GOVERNANCE PROCESSES AND ASSESSMENTS

The development community needs to make a distinction between resultsand success in governance assessments. Too much emphasis comes fromdonors to focus assessments on results specifi c to inputs from development programmes. No one is asking about success in terms of how we are ableto see whether what is happening in terms of governance reforms ismeaningful to citizens.Participant at the Oslo Governance Forum

The most eff ective way to practise sustainable forest managementin Indonesia is to protect the people who protect the forest.Abdon Nababan Secretary General of AMAN (Indonesian Network for Indigenous People)

The principle in brief

Governance assessments should support multi-stakeholder approaches, political settlements and consensus-building in order to broaden ownership of democratic reform. They should recognize that such broad ownershipcannot be assumed in advance, but may be considered a positive outcome of a governance assessmentprocess. In addition, they should acknowledge that citizens and social groups may have diff erent interests, butthat governance evidence can help to overcome challenges posed by acting collectively.

The importance of the principle

Although the principles are not listed in order of importance, it is logical that the principle of country ownership is mentioned fi rst, because this principle, when defi ned in the broadest way, embraces most of the other 10principles. On the other hand, “country ownership of governance processes” tends towards the verbose, because governance, by defi nition, deals with the interaction between the state and other actors in society and cannotbe successful if it is not owned by the actors involved. Looking at the origin of governance assessments andhow governance indicators have been developed and used by donors in recent decades as an instrumentof donor conditionality, it is nevertheless important to continue to stress the “country ownership” principle.The principle refl ects, as Göran Hydén noted in the Forum, the recent shift in governance assessments from atechnical and expert exercise towards more comprehensive processes that measure and facilitate a democraticgovernance process by stressing and assessing the eff ectiveness and legitimacy of policy action.

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In this context, it is better to speak of country ownership than national ownership, because the latter may be perceived as national-level government ownership. The principle, of course, advocates for multi-stakeholder involvement in governance assessments that do not necessarily have to be initiated by government. It is linked to the definition of national ownership in the Paris Declaration and the Accra Agenda for Action: “partner countries exercise effective leadership over their development policies and strategies and co-ordinate development actions”. But it is more than that. It stresses collective ownership over state ownership. The principle of country ownership advocates the use and construction of national capacities for governance assessments. It also demands that assessments are linked to or integrated with existing or emerging monitoring and evaluation systems.

Treating governance assessments more as a process, and moving from a technical effectiveness perspective towards a political legitimacy assessment that involves both state and non-state actors, means that governance assessments increasingly need to assess and address governance from different entry points and perspectives. They must also incorporate mechanisms for dialogue that can help partners in the process of learning how to govern better.

Case Study: Participatory Governance Assessment on REDD+ in Indonesia

“Country ownership is of critical importance for the success of the UN programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) and for the Participatory Governance Assessments that are an integral part of its approach” said Irman Lanti, UNDP Indonesia’s Assistant Country Director, during the project presentation at the Oslo Governance Forum. For more on Participatory Governance Assessments please also see pages 14-15.

Country-specific and country-owned management and governance structures are needed to deal with the complexity of conflicting interests. Strengthening the voice of citizens and the engagement of civil society, along with traditional forms of support to develop state systems and institutions, are crucial to establishing responsive governance mechanisms.

Although the REDD+ programme is only a few years old and has recently kicked off in the first two pilot countries (Indonesia and Nigeria), it is nevertheless an interesting case to present under the principle of country ownership, because it has fully integrated the notion of country ownership in its approach.

The forestry sector in Indonesia is plagued by bad governance through underdeveloped and unenforced forestry regulation, lack of transparency in decision-making and extensive corruption at all levels. Examples of such practices are:

• In Indonesia there is no clear legal definition of a ‘forest area’. This ambiguity is misused by illegal loggers, plantation companies and illegal miners to avoid prosecution when they are caught doing illegal activities in forest areas. It is very difficult for law enforcement officers to collect solid evidence that builds a clear case against them. It also offers a ready opportunity to accept a bribe; and • Bribes are used to change the zoning of an area to allow for logging or to acquire a licence without the otherwise requisite technical review or recommendation. Public officials, who own shares in logging companies, use their position to defend the interests of their company against that of competitors, to avoid violations being reported and to withdraw sanctions against their companies.

Indonesia’s voiceless indigenous people suffer most from these practices, despite their way of living being more or less in line with the principles of sustainable forest management. Abdon Nababan, Secretary General of AMAN (Indonesian Network for Indigenous People) noted during the Forum that indigenous people see REDD+ as an opportunity to negotiate their rights with the Government of Indonesia on a more level playing field.

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To develop solid policy advice and adequate capacity development support to both state and non-state actors, the REDD+ programme started with a comprehensive governance assessment. At the time of writing, this is in the last stage of design before it is implemented. This PGA pilot is the first of its kind within the United Nations REDD+ programme and it has been successfully developed through an inclusive and participatory process to gain different stakeholders’ views and interests with regard to process, focus, indicators, and methodology. Next to gaining the views of different stakeholders on governance issues, its aim is to fill the gap in reliable data on forestry management and to assess Indonesia’s level of preparedness for REDD+ implementation. The outcome will help to refine future REDD+ interventions and to provide a monitoring and evaluation mechanism during its implementation.

The REDD+ programme started with intensive consultations with all groups of stakeholders. This aimed to create ownership and government buy-in at national and provincial levels, and to develop an appreciation of priority issues. It became clear that the political economy situation in the forestry sector in Indonesia meant that UNDP would (reluctantly) have to take a lead in the initial stage of the programme, because it was seen by all stakeholders as the only impartial player with no direct interest in the forestry sector.

Secondly, a multi-stakeholder expert panel was established. This is charged with designing the methodology, supervising the data collection, evaluating the data, and drafting recommendations. The panel’s composition reflects the stakeholder membership and includes representatives from, for example, government, business, indigenous communities, and academia. The expert panel initially prioritized governance issues and related indicators. These were discussed with all stakeholders at the lowest level possible to ensure that issues relevant to their agenda were included.

While this process takes time, it not only enhances the quality of the PGA, but also ensures that various stakeholders can recognize themselves in the assessment, which enhances the level of local ownership.

Examples of issues that are integrated into the PGA and emerged from this broad consultation include: • Effective involvement of key stakeholders in developing spatial and forestry planning; • Implementation of a capacity building programme for community members, provided by the government in developing spatial and forestry planning; • Establishment of a complaint handling mechanism on spatial and forestry planning processes; • Rights’ recognition and a mechanism to secure due process in obtaining management rights; • Protection of rights granted by government; • Capacity building programme for community members to obtain forest rights regulated by government; and • An accountability process for forest institutions.

To assess the preparedness and capacity of the various stakeholders, the PGA will include capacity assessment elements. For the indigenous or local community group, the PGA will look, for example, at: • The participation capacity of the indigenous/local community through legitimate representation in meetings that discuss and decide on the area planning and forest management; • The level of effectiveness in coordinating the indigenous/local community to influence public policy and development projects in relation to the acknowledgement and protection of their rights to land and forest resources; • The availability level of written or verbal internal rules within the indigenous/local community in relation to customary territorial arrangements, the territory managed by the people and forest area allocation, plus the assignment of impartial benefits; and • The development of initiatives and partnerships that specifically build the models of sustainable forest management and REDD+.

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Conclusion

To create broad country-wide ownership of a governance assessment, it is essential to involve stakeholder groups in the design of the governance assessment, to define priorities collectively, and to ensure that information important for each of these groups is collected later during the roll-out process.

Spending time on this initial stage of a governance assessment, to listen to the various stakeholders and take their interests seriously, and to ensure that their priorities are reflected in the actual assessment methodology is a precondition for creating collective ownership of the process and for establishing a level playing field for serious negotiations subsequently.

More information

On the REDD programme see: http://www.un-redd.org/ On the REDD project in Indonesia see: http://www.un-redd.org/UNREDDProgramme/CountryActions/Indonesia/tabid/987/language/en-US/Default.aspxContact Irman Lanti, Assistant Country Director UNDP Indonesia, at Irman.Lanti@undp.org

PRINCIPLE 2: STRENGTHEN THE ABILITY OFPEOPLE TO HOLD THEIR GOVERNMENT TO ACCOUNT

Social Accountability is necessary but not suffi cient to deliver eff ectivehigh quality public services. Assessing and strengthening the supply sideof governance must be equally considered.Dr. Rajesh Tandon President of PRIA in India

The principle in brief

Indicators and assessment results should serve to strengthen individual and group claims for better governance performance. Recognition that dissemination of assessment results is not suffi cient, and that strengtheningthe ability of citizens and especially poor, indigenous people and other marginalized groups to hold theirgovernments to account, should be integral to the assessment process from start to fi nish. This means deliberatelychoosing communication, dissemination methods and media that are relevant to marginalized groups as well asstrengthening economic and statistical literacy, raising understanding of issues, making information meaningful and accessible and allowing for genuine participation in decision-making.

The importance of the principle

Various presenters at the Oslo Governance Forum, including Aruna Roy and Dr. Rajesh Tandon, stressed thatbuilding new forms of participatory and accountable (local) governance means working on both sides of theequation. Attention must be given to strengthening the capacity of local citizens to exercise their voice, but voicewithout responsiveness simply builds frustration. There is also a need to build and support the capacity of (local)governments and representatives to be responsive to community participation and to learn how to changetheir roles, attitudes, and behaviours in the new environment.

Principles 2 and 6 both deal with space for citizens to hold government to account. Principle 2 deals with enhancing the claim-making capacity of citizens and civil society organizations, while Principle 6 addresses the issue of promoting or protecting the space created by government for citizens to participate and hold government to account.

Case studies presented at the Forum highlighted the trend of citizens becoming more vocal and demandingdirect – and not simply electoral – accountability from service providers and politicians. “Like other aspects ofcitizenship, accountability is not only created from above through institutional procedures and mandate, but mustalso be constantly claimed through strategies and mobilization, pressure and vigilance from below”.8

8 John Gaventa (2006): Foreword in P. Newell and J. Wheeler (eds); Rights, Resources and the Politics of Accountability, London.

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This ‘new’ accountability has three characteristics, according to Goetz and Jenkins (p. 16 Reinventing Accountability, New York 2005): It involves “an insistence on:

1) A more direct role for ordinary people and their associations in obtaining accountability, using 2) An expanded repertoire of methods, sometimes in new accountability jurisdictions, in the pursuit of 3) A more exacting standard of social justice”.

Supporting citizens to demand a deepening of accountability should not lead to the creation of parallel accountability structures, but to democratization and strengthening of existing institutions contributing to the effort to reconnect state and citizens.

Case Study: Improving service delivery through citizen tracking in Nepal

Kedar Khadka, Director of Pro Public’s Good Governance Project in Nepal, presented various practical examples of how his programme has supported citizens in Nepal to demand improved service delivery and better governance.

Since its inclusion in the Corruption Perception Index some years ago, Nepal has continued to slide downwards on the index and, with a score of 2.2, is now, according to this index, among the world’s 20 most corrupt countries. Despite its Right to Information Act, government officials remain very reluctant to provide relevant information on service delivery to the public.

Pro Public is a non-profit, non-governmental organization dedicated to the cause of public interest and was founded in 1991. It raises a voice against corruption, red tape and irregularities, and raises government bodies’ awareness of their duties and responsibilities. Its focus over the years has been on good governance, protection of natural and cultural heritage, environmental justice, pollution control, gender justice and consumer protection. Pro Public has consistently succeeded in creating government accountability in Nepal through media campaigns, advocacy, negotiation, correspondence and public interest litigation.

Its Good Governance Programme works directly with citizens and focuses on Nepal’s most marginalized groups (women and indigenous Janjati minorities) to enable and empower them to start asking questions and claim their rights. It does so by building their capacity through training, orientation, interaction and sensitization programmes that promote equitable access to public goods, services and resources, and foster their participation in local decision-making bodies and in monitoring public service delivery at the grassroots level.

It uses a range of methodologies to connect with to hard-to-reach groups. One of the most important methodologies is community radio, with broadcasts such as Good Governance Pathway, Report, What I Saw, Office Time, Activities, Help-line, Monitoring, Interesting Events, Listeners’ Forum, Good Governance Clubs Reports, Opinion of the Month, Voice of Peace, Poem, Radio Songs, Plays and GG Arena.

It implements Citizen Report Cards (CRC) (feedback from citizens on government performance and quality of services) combined with public hearings in which citizens themselves use the results of the CRCs to ask critical questions of their duty bearers.

The programme has supported the establishment of Good Governance Clubs that emerged spontaneously after the community radio programmes started in 2000. Since then, more than 6,000 Good Governance Clubs, with more than 60,000 members, have been formed throughout the country. The clubs organize local activities that are often covered by local and national newspapers. Their activities include the publication of bulletins and wallpapers, visits to local authorities, awareness campaigns, peace campaigns/rallies, interaction programmes, public hearings, trainings, scholarships to school students, anti-corruption rallies, and civic monitoring of local government officers.

Through all its activities, the programme aims to stimulate a ‘Why Culture’. This aims to bring about changes in the traditional mindset that tolerates and accepts the ‘misdeeds’ of elders and those in authority.

The Good Governance Programme helps citizens to organize public hearings. These hearings provide a forum through which people have direct access to government authorities at various levels. The main purpose of the public hearing is to help citizens break away from old ways of remaining indifferent or reacting destructively, particularly in matters relating to good governance. It encourages citizens to talk about pro-poor governance and helps them identify what they really need. At the end of a public hearing on a particular subject, participating authorities are requested to sign public declarations to show their commitment.

Experiences from the ground The results of these efforts may seem small to outside eyes, but they have had a tremendous impact on the self-esteem of the people involved and are examples of initiatives which could have a large impact if scaled up. They have helped to transform people from subjects to citizens. For instance, the people in Dalit (a small settlement of nine households) were promised a storage tank for water, but the money for the project had been stuck at the District Development Committee. With the project’s help, local people went to the committee and claimed their share. This helped to ensure that the tank was completed.

Ms. Suntadevi Tamang is 65 years old and lives in Kathajor-9, Ramechhap district. She rears chickens, and regularly listens to the radio at home. One day, she heard that the price of chickens had increased in the local market. This enabled her to sell her chickens at a higher price. After a live broadcast about a public hearing in Khotang district on 19 December 2009, members of the User’s Committees flocked to the District Development Committee to demand that long overdue advances were cleared. The community radio read out the names of those who had not cleared their advances. Community pressure also ensured that the Chairman of the Construction Entrepreneurs Association also cleared his NRS30,000 advance.

Conclusion

Enhancing the capacity of people to hold their government to account may benefit from starting small and dealing with issues that directly affect local communities. While these efforts often start with small gains, often creating improved self-esteem, more and more members of disadvantaged groups may start to participate in decision-making processes.

The examples exemplify the importance of good organization as a means of claiming rights, and to reduce the potential of being victimized and bullied by those in power. The main power that most marginalized people often have is their weight of numbers. An organization can give that extra push that is often needed for local people and communities to get organized and effectively claim their statutory rights.

More information

Pro Public: www.propublic.org For more information on the Good Governance Programme, please contact Kedar Khadka at kedarkhadka@hotmail.com

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PRINCIPLE 3: APPLY A RIGHTS-BASED APPROACH

Assessing and measuring human rights conditions and trends gives important information about countries’ institutional foundations, political accountability and the popular demand for social accountability. Bård Andreassen Director of Research, Norwegian Centre for Human Rights

The principle in brief

Governance assessments need to generate information and analysis that contribute to a better understanding of the issues of poverty, deprivation and exclusion, and promote a gender-sensitive approach to public policy and governance. The rights and interests of poor, vulnerable people, women and other marginalized groupsmust be taken into account in the collection and presentation of governance evidence, as well as in its use.

The importance of the principle

Human rights are not yet systematically part of democratic governance assessments. They are, though, their foundation and therefore the ultimate criteria against which any type of governance is constructed andassessed. Human rights provide the normative and legal indicators for the protection of each of the components of governance.

The value of a human rights-based approach is both in the process and the quality of governance assessments. The application of human rights frameworks raises a number of questions. Who is participating in developing assessment tools? Have we engaged non-state actors and, in particular, excluded populations? To what degree can marginalized people have access to goods? This is precisely where human rights can make a diff erence,also as indicators.

One of the Forum’s session discussed how the integration of human rights in governance assessments canin various ways improve the quality and impact of governance assessments:

1) Human rights can be used as the conceptual foundation for the design of a governance assessment methodology, because they can be seen as the ultimate benchmarks to which governments can be held to account. Duty bearers cannot deny their importance, as they provide ultimate non-negotiable baseline indicators; 2) They can contribute to the actual defi nition of assessment indicators, especially in relation to equity criteria; and 3) Their integration into governance assessments creates awareness of the importance of human rights, while they also have a strong mobilizing and empowering force to stimulate active citizenship.

During the human rights session, several preconditions were formulated that need to be fulfilled for a successful integration of human rights into governance assessments. To conduct governance assessments in general – and human rights-based governance assessments in particular – there needs to be a basic level of respect for human rights in the country (especially with regard to participation and freedom of speech) and space for civil society and citizens to freely participate in such exercises.

There is also a need to pay more consideration to the local context and to cultural dimensions around human rights and governance. Without diluting the importance of universal standards, there is a need to recognize the cultural dimension. It is important to provide space to democratize universal principles and processes. Global concepts resonate differently in different local communities. One therefore needs to decide from the perspective of the marginalized groups involved what is important at what moment in time.

How can human rights inform and influence social development and governance performance in practice? According to Bård Andreassen, Director of Research at the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, this can be achieved by:

• Upholding the principles of the Human Rights-Based Approach to Development; • By using human rights data and indicators, including public interest litigation (legal accountability); • By securing a bottom-up perspective; • By addressing social justice, such as poverty issues and affirmative action; • By emphasizing the role of the media; and • By involving the human rights community at local and national levels.

Case Study: Policy experienced by the people

Jorge Romano, from the ActionAid office in Rio de Janeiro, presented a particularly interesting case on how human rights can be integrated practically into a governance assessment. In addition, through a shift in focus over the lifespan of the project, it shows two dimensions of human rights policy monitoring from a governance perspective: monitoring policy formulation by CSOs, and monitoring policy implementation. In the latter, citizens themselves became actively involved in monitoring progress on the implementation of important human right policies in Brazil, and thereby contribute to their own empowerment and to stronger social accountability.

First, this project has to be seen in the political economy context of Brazil. This was, at least until the end of the last century, characterized by strong neo-patrimonial practices in which access to public resources and services was seen as a favour from the elites rather than a people’s right. But since the adoption of a new constitution in 1998, there has been an expansion of social and political rights and there is gradually more space for civil society to participate in public policy formulation.

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The project’s first phase, which started in 2005, was called ‘Measuring and Improving the Impact of Public Policy Monitoring by Civil Society’. It aimed to help deepen democracy and foster active citizenship in Brazil by improving knowledge among organized civil society of the public policy process and by strengthening public policy monitoring by civil society. The project already had a rights-based focus by addressing among others consumers’ rights and women’s rights. Within two years, the capacities of CSOs to understand and monitor policies, to raise issues and elevate them to the public agenda, to translate policies into user-friendly language, and to effectively network had indeed increased. However, the ultimate impact of poor people gaining more access to public services, of improving direct social accountability and of mobilizing citizens to hold government to account was limited.

The second phase of the project began in 2008 and has had a stronger focus on strengthening the capacity of citizens themselves to understand and monitor, as (potential) beneficiaries, the implementation of rights-based policies and to hold government directly accountable. It has also worked to change citizens from consumers of services into agents of change. The project was therefore renamed as ‘Policy Experienced by the People’. This second phase focuses on three thematic areas: food rights, urban rights and women’s rights, because these were perceived to be of critical importance to the poor and socially excluded in Brazil. The project works with local partners in five municipalities and also has national and international components.

For each of the rights-based policies, the methodology is more or less the same. At the local level, so-called Estamos de olho (‘We are watching’) forums have been established. Each forum has a local committee, ideally consisting of a representative of CBO and/or local community leaderships, a social movement’s representative, a local partner’s representative, and a municipal government agent. It is responsible for leading the monitoring process at that level. These local forums have the specific task of sharing with the local communities the content of the policies, promoting discussion within the communities, identifying the policies’ beneficiaries in their area of action, systematizing the limitations or problems in the policies’ implementation, promoting the voice of the beneficiaries, and establishing links with local level government policy managers.

Each forum also organizes a meeting every three months with the participation of the policy’s beneficiaries, social movements and local government agents to jointly evaluate its implementation. The forum interviews the policy’s potential beneficiaries to help monitor its implementation. The project has a learning-based approach to social change. Citizens’ behavioural change is achieved by awareness raising and helping them to reflect to their own situation. This is designed to result in the realization that they do not necessarily have to remain locked in their present reality, triggering a drive for change.

At the national level, three partners specialized in the selected rights and policies produce monthly newsletters on each of the public policies. They facilitate sharing of information and exchange visits between the Estamos de olhos forums to enable participants to place their experiences in a wider context and to build accountability networks. This collective information is used by ActionAid to inform its international campaigns.

At local and national levels, the forums meet regularly with relevant government officials to discuss bottlenecks in policy implementation and service delivery perceived by the beneficiaries, resulting in practical local changes and policy changes at national level.

Experiences from the ground

The women’s rights theme focuses on the dissemination of information about the Maria da Penha Law.This law was adopted in 2006 as a fi rst step in curbing domestic violence against women. It was named afterMaria da Penha, whose husband twice tried to murder her.

The changes promoted by the law include greater punishments for violence against women in the domestic or family sphere, the creation of special domestic violence police stations run by women, and special courts to deal with domestic violence cases in every municipality. The law also foresees a series of measures to protectand support the women who have experienced domestic violence, including shelters and centres that givevictims medical, psychological, legal and economic assistance. In a society where one in every fi ve women isa victim of domestic violence, this law is a major step forward. It helps women to understand and claim their rights and increase their access to justice.

Although the law should already have been implemented, in practice it has been rolled out slowly and unequally. While some states have given it priority, in others police offi cers themselves have encouraged women not to complain. The greatest obstacles relate to chauvinism in the judiciary and among public security agents, who are the main actors responsible for its implementation. Public resources for its implementation in the states and municipalities are also insuffi cient.

The Estamos de olhos forum were established to focus primarily on sharing information with citizens and creatingawareness on the existence of this new law.

The realization of the law’s potential benefi ts for many women in Brazil has contributed to basic awareness and the understanding that action is required by women themselves if they are to produce change.

Since the establishment of the Maria da Penha Law, women have to reactto this violence, but many of them still have no information about the law. Casa da Cultura Group, Rio de Janiero state

We had no knowledge of the law and by assembling here today we came to know. Centro de Mulheres do Cabo Group, Pernambuco state

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We know that many women fought hard for this law to become eff ective,so we know you have many diffi culties, that much needs to be improved,but there are moments like this one that we will be fi ghting for, arguing forit to be changed. I want improvement, but then it is necessary that we havespaces like this for each one to give his or her opinion and the movementto emerge strengthened to achieve our goal. It is not easy, but also is notimpossible. The impossible does not exist, it will depend on us all Women. Group Centro de Mulheres do Cabo, Pernambuco state

These discussions lead us to think about our role, and about what to do fromhere onward. We leave here today, close the discussion, with the expectationthat we are committing ourselves even more ... The discussion today shows that we have to go beyond our personal matters. We will commit ourselves and increasingly recognize that our role goes beyond our personal needs.Group Centro de Mulheres do Cabo, Pernambuco state

Increased knowledge and empowerment have brought about positive action. In one participating municipality,a Maria da Penha Forum has been established that aims to expand the debate on domestic violenceand organizes public hearings. A charter adopted by these groups suggests practical policy improvementrecommendations, such as the deployment of female police offi cers and the establishment of shelters forvictims. Over time, the focus has shifted from creating awareness of the Maria da Penha law to renegotiatingfor women to be individuals with rights, who are recognized by society, but also by the state.

Conclusion

The Policy Experienced by the People initiative shows how human rights, when translated into actual policies, can act as a focal point for a governance assessment in both content and process. This is achieved by the active participation of marginalized groups themselves. Such active involvement can have a tremendous empowering impact that changes subjects into agents of change who demand social accountability.

The case also shows that lack of information on entitlements is a key element in limiting the empowerment ofsocial actors, both individually and collectively. It inhibits their ability to transform their living conditions, topromote the state’s accountability and infl uence the political and social arena, and access economic markets.Promoting access to information for people living in poverty means breaking barriers and facilitating theempowerment processes.

The project’s transition from CSOs monitoring policy processes to monitoring the actual implementation of policies by citizens themselves reflects the most recent shift in governance assessments towards what might become the fourth generation of governance assessments. Those governance assessments are conducted by the citizens themselves to collect evidence that strengthens demands for direct accountability of duty bearers. They are, in short, governance assessments that empower, stimulate active citizenship and enhance the citizens’ own agency.

The project manager, Jorge Romano, acknowledges that the process is complex and labour intensive, and that it takes time to change the institutional culture of the service providers to make them accountable to the beneficiaries. “But the reward of seeing people taking charge of their own lives is worth the effort.”

More information

Please contact Jorge Romano, International Governance team, ActionAid Brazil, at Jorge.Romano@actionaid.org or visit www.actionaid.org.br/english

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PRINCIPLE 4: STRENGTHEN GOVERNMENTS’CAPABILITY TO BE RESPONSIVE

Do not look for a magical wand that would increase women’s participationnumbers, instead work incrementally. Before wanting to change the law atany level of government, seek to ensure that authorities are fi rst infl uencedby protocols and the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms ofDiscrimination against Women (CEDAW) principles. Saudatu Mahdi Programme Coordinator, Women’s Rights Advancement and Protection Alternative, Nigeria

The principle in brief

This principle aims to strengthen governments’ capacity to promote governance indicators as essential tools for benchmarking results and managing performance. It seeks to assist national and local actors and institutionsto produce independent assessments and ensure that there is regular information-sharing and communication of governance targets and data.

The importance of the principle

A government’s ability to respond to the needs and preferences of its citizens is determined by a combinationof many factors, including the reliability of knowledge of those needs and preferences, and the ability andwillingness of government (both politicians and bureaucrats) to respond to them. Citizens’ needs and preferences are rarely univocal and are often related to the political economy situations of various groups in society. Should government be responsive to the preferences of the majority, or of the most marginalized, or those with political and economic power, or a workable combination of all? It may be argued that this is part of the political debate,but this debate should be based on solid information of these preferences and that related decisions aboutresources allocation are made in a transparent manner.

Governance assessments can help to provide information on the needs and preferences of citizens. Theycan contribute to the defi nition of benchmarks and targets. And they can help to monitor progress towardsa government’s objectives.

Case Study: Enhancing gender responsive service deliveryin the agricultural sector in Rwanda

The following case study was presented by Allen Cyizanye from the Gender Monitoring Office in Rwanda. It describes how the Gender and Democratic Governance Programme implemented by UN Women and UNDP aims to improve government responsiveness in agricultural service delivery.

Agriculture is Rwanda’s most important sector. It generates over 35 percent of GDP, 84 percent of employment (especially for women), 70 percent of export revenues and covers 90 percent of national food needs. But production remains predominantly at a subsistence level. There are various reasons for this, including rough terrain, erosion, and climatic hazards combined with lack of modern technology, small rural household farm plots that cannot support commercial production, and demographic pressures. Women, in general, and women-headed households, in particular, face additional challenges from their limited access to, and control over, production means, extension services, finances and markets, plus widespread time poverty because of heavy household duties and unpaid work.

The programme focuses on gender-sensitive institutional change in the governance of service delivery in the agriculture sector, policy processes and implementation channels. It also seeks to promote channels for citizens to improve the way services are conceptualized, designed, funded and executed, with the ultimate aim of improving women’s access to services.

In mid-2011, the Gender Monitoring Office in partnership with UN Women conducted a gender sensitive User Satisfaction Survey on agricultural service delivery in Kirehe and Nyaruguru Districts.

The survey revealed that women have limited access to information on agricultural extension services, market opportunities, agricultural inputs such as access to land financial services, and other extension services.

Throughout the survey, it became clear that there is political will at national, district and sector levels to mainstream gender in all development sectors, including agriculture. Local governments have actually endeavoured to make gender a reality in all programming efforts, and there is a duty to support these efforts. Evidence for this came from meetings held with district officials (Mayor and Vice-Mayors), and the support given to this activity in both districts, as well as the need expressed by district authorities to be technically supported in the planning processes and development of baseline data in this sector.

Much has been done to improve agriculture extension services and increase the availability of agricultural inputs in Rwanda. Due to the unequal power relations at family level, these government services are, however, not adequately utilized by both male and female members of households. Training and financial services opportunities exist, but rural farmers – and women especially – have more difficulty in accessing them, because of low literacy levels among women, limited time allocated to productive activities and cultural barriers.

The membership of women in farmer cooperatives is lower than men, as is the representation of women in decision-making structures of those farmer cooperatives. This aggravates the position of women, because most public agriculture services are channelled through these farmer cooperatives.

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The survey prompted multiple responses at different government levels, all aimed at improving access to agricultural services for women:

• Collaboration was enhanced among key stakeholders on agricultural service delivery to strengthen implementation and oversight mechanisms to ensure gender responsive service delivery in the agriculture sector; • Local authorities became more engaged, while women’s groups and farmers’ associations pledged to provide gender responsive agricultural services; • A capacity building programme for stakeholders in the agriculture sector was implemented to understand and respond to gender differences; • The theme of gender responsive service delivery was mainstreamed in the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources’ campaigns ahead of the planting seasons; • The pilot districts received technical support to mainstream gender in the planning process for improved women’s access to trainings, extension services and paid labour; and • Changes to the fertilizer voucher system in Kirehe and Nyaruguru districts allowed both men and women household members to sign for and receive agricultural inputs through the joint signing of contracts by wife and husband.

Policy recommendations were also made to further improve women’s access to services and government’s ability to reach out to as many farmers as possible:

• Awareness raising campaigns on gender responsive service delivery. Campaigns should be aligned with agriculture planting seasons and key messages on gender equality in the provision of service delivery mainstreamed in the Ministry of Agriculture’s themes; • Targeted audiences should include male and female farmers, extension officers from government and development partner projects, service providers, women councils, private sector and civil society organizations; • Build the capacity of agricultural extension officers and support them to reach out to female and male farmers; • Train women farmers to fully participate in ‘Farmer Field Schools’, because this is a highly effective extension approach; • Support farmers generally, and women particularly, to establish strong producer associations capable of negotiating and influencing the local market pricing and searching for alternative markets in Rwanda and abroad; • Promote women’s representation in governance structures of farmer cooperatives and ensure adequate participation of women in decision-making within the cooperative management; • Train women farmers in business plan development, basic accounting skills, and sensitize them for more confidence and self-esteem; and • Develop a monitoring and evaluation system for cooperatives to monitor gender inclusion in development activities and related impact on a permanent basis.

Conclusion

This case study shows that if there is sufficient political will and a supportive environment, governance and service delivery assessments can, in a very practical manner, identify gaps in a government service delivery system and develop recommendations that improve the responsiveness of government to the needs and preferences of its citizens.

More information For more information on this case study contact Allen Cyizanye at: cyizanye.allen@gmo.gov.rw

For more information on the Gender and Democratic Governance Programme: Enhancing Gender Responsive Service Delivery in the Agriculture Sector in Rwanda, please contact Eugene Rutabagaya at eugene.rutabagaya@unwomen.org

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PRINCIPLE 5: STRENGTHEN ACCOUNTABILITY ACROSS GOVERNMENT

There is a political economy question behind corruption. Educate politiciansso they are becoming less corrupt.....are you serious? Husseini Abdu ActionAid Nigeria

The principle in brief

Acknowledging that checks and balances are essential for deepening democratic governance, indicators and governance evidence should support the work of parliaments and independent institutions of horizontalaccountability, including anti-corruption agencies, ombudsman offi ces, and human rights institutions.

The importance of the principle

The Oslo Governance Forum focussed more on strengthening the demand side of governance and the linkbetween governance assessments and social accountability. This principle, which addresses more the supply side of governance, therefore received less attention in the Forum, although its importance was stressed on severaloccasions. It became clear during discussions that while governments often acknowledge the need to improveinternal oversight and control mechanisms so as to improve governance performance, external pressure isconstantly required to ensure that governments do not curtail the eff ectiveness of independent oversightinstitutions, such as the Anti-Corruption Commissions, by making them answerable to the President insteadof Parliament.

Ideally, a clear and respected division of power between the legislative and executive institutions in government would mean a reduced need for anti-corruption agencies, ombudsman and human rights institutions. Sincethat is unfortunately not the case in most emerging democracies, these extra oversight bodies are (temporarily) necessary and useful if they are able to operate independently. The cases presented during the Forum showedthat this is challenging in many countries. In Zambia, the relationship between the Anti-Corruption Commissionand the Attorney General or head of public prosecution, is often problematic, because those responsible forprosecutions can decide not to follow up on politically sensitive cases. In Botswana, as in many other countries,the commission reports directly to the President and not to Parliament. Some participants argued that thiseff ectively places the President above the law. In many other countries, anti-corruption commissions suff er from political interference in their work.

Governance assessments can provide these institutions with valuable data that enable them to fulfi l their function – or,at least, to justify their existence. Because of their ability to identify systemic gaps in the way government hasorganized its service delivery and related fi scal transfers, governance assessments can also contribute to a revision of horizontal or vertical relationships between government institutions.

Case study: ICT for Governance in South-Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo

The objective of the project was to:

• Strengthen the accountability relationship between citizens and governments; • Increase citizens’ voice in decision-making processes through the use of ICT; and • Increase local governments’ responsiveness to citizens’ needs.

But the project had an interesting side-effect of changing the relationship between the various levels of government involved in the process.

The project was launched in 2009 by the Information and Communication Technology for Governance Programme, supported by the World Bank Institute. The governance diagnostics and stakeholder discussions identified a series of governance challenges, such as asymmetry in information, low levels of understanding of budget procedures, and engagement with civil society that needed to be tackled for improving governance and local service delivery. Those diagnostics indicated that participatory budgeting, as a social accountability mechanism, could offer a promising entry-point for broader governance reform in the country.

To achieve more participatory budgeting in local government, the project used ICT as a medium to involve citizens in the activities of the local council, as well as to build the capacities of both civil society and government staff. Additional activities were introduced to ensure the participation of groups that are traditionally excluded from these processes (women, youth and the pygmy population).

As a result, participatory budgets were drafted in various local governments in South-Kivu, which contributed to:

• A change in the ability and motivation of citizens to participate in budgeting and hold governments accountable; • A change in the ability of CSOs to train stakeholders and mobilize citizens; and • A change in the ability and motivation of provincial governments and local governments to institutionalize participatory budgeting and engaging with citizens.

The last change, presented by Thomas Maketa, is of particular interest, because it highlights how governance assessments and related improvements in governance can have an impact on intra-governmental relationships.

One of the most tangible results of these activities was gaining the buy-in and commitment of the provincial government to do participatory budgeting. A major constraint to the implementation of participatory budgeting pilots was the absence of financial transfers from the provincial government of South-Kivu to the local governments that would enable a participatory process to be carried out locally (mandated by law, but not respected).

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According to local government officials, a consequence of the discussions held in the workshop was that the provincial government started, for the first time, to transfer funds to the local level on a regular basis. In an interview, Joan Bunonif, the councillor of the Ministry of Budget in South Kivu, argues that “after receiving trainings, the province decided to elaborate the budget in a participatory fashion for 2012 and stated that the law would be respected”.

A process of negotiation and awareness raising on the potential benefits of participatory budgeting was therefore crucial in helping provincial governments better understand the potential benefits of the process in terms of, for example, political visibility and legitimacy, and reduced tax evasion. The provincial government took strong ownership of the process from the very outset and started organizing its own workshops to relay its newly acquired knowledge to all local communities in this 65,000-square-kilometre province with many remote rural populations.

Taking the process one step further, in April 2011 the Ministry of Budget institutionalized the process of participatory budgeting in the province as a mandatory process for all local governments.

This substantial shift in the government’s behaviour is significant considering that local governments will now submit a part of their investment budget, and give up part of their power to citizens who can decide where the money should go. In a meeting, one of the mayors said “from now on as we receive funds we allocate 50 percent to investment in participatory budgets so that people can see the benefits of it”. As a result, concrete projected delivery of public services to the poor has started, such as the repair of 54 classrooms and a bridge in Luhindja, the creation of a health centre and the repair of the sewage system in Bagira, and the construction of toilets in local markets and a water fountain in Ibanda.

A further precondition necessary for participatory budgeting to work in the province was the commitment and ability of local governments to engage with citizens. That was made possible by the provincial government’s own requirement that it be a condition to transfer money to the local level. Mandating citizen participation and engaging with citizens produced a formula that helped break down the barrier preventing the transfer of funds to local governments, because it built trust in the provincial government that the transferred funds would be appropriately used by local governments.

Interestingly, many stakeholders participating in the process observed that increased trust in local and provincial government built through this participatory mechanism has mobilized additional resources as more citizens are paying their taxes and the transfer of funds from the provincial level to the local level has increased significantly. This creates a virtuous cycle that creates trust in the process as government becomes more responsive and citizens participate and pay taxes.

Conclusion

This case study shows that through governance assessments and related interventions that are principally focused on enhancing citizen participation in governance, a chain reaction can be triggered that affects the way that government provides services. It improves the legitimacy of, and trust in, local government both in the eyes of its citizens and by higher level institutions. If the change in relationship between provincial and local government had not taken place in South-Kivu, the project would only have strengthened citizens’ disillusionment in the government’s ability to deliver services. Gaining political buy-in at all levels of government during the early stages of such projects is critical for their success.

More information

Regarding the Information and Communication Technology for Governance Programme visit the website www.ict4goc.net

For more information on this project, please contact Thomas Maketa at tmaketa@worldbank.org

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PRINCIPLE 6: PROMOTE AND PROTECT SPACE FOR CITIZENSAND CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATIONS TO PARTICIPATE

In a democracy, without the right to know there can be no real right to exercise power and make the Government and the State accountable to its people. Aruna Roy Founder of MKSS, India

The principle in brief

An enabling environment that respects human rights, particularly freedom of expression and freedom ofassembly and association is essential for carrying out democratic governance assessments.

The importance of the principle

This might seem a rather straightforward and logical principle, as it describes the basic pre-condition beforea governance assessment can even start. But in many countries, even if basic human rights are guaranteed,there is often no tradition of direct or deliberative democracy, of citizens openly and constructively holdinggovernment to account. Governance assessments, if implemented in the proper way and by providingcapacity development to both citizens and state institutions for them to play their role in this process, canhelp to change the ‘us and them’ attitude that is often prevalent on both sides. They can create space fordialogue and cooperation and assist in (re)creating the social contract between citizens and state.

Governance assessments can help to change passive service users into active citizens who demand goodquality services. They also realize that not all demands can be met instantly, and are willing and able totake responsibility themselves, with the acknowledgement that government cannot solve all problems.Governance assessments can also help change government attitudes with regard to the role of citizens inpolicy defi nition and allocation of resources. The change sees citizens more as co-creators than as voicelessconsumers of services, and recognizes the potential benefi ts of citizens being more responsive and accountable.

Support to the creation of such an enabling environment for citizens and civil society organizations toparticipate in governance can take many forms.9 Ideally, participation in governance should not depend onarbitrary government decisions (participation by invitation), but should be defi ned as a legal right, as can beseen in the Philippines, Brazil, Bolivia and India. This can be complemented by ensuring active participationof traditionally excluded groups in local representative structures through reserved seats. Although suchmeasures have negative side eff ects, they have, for example, resulted in more than one million women being elected to government offi ce in India.

8 Based on: John Gaventa, “Strengthening Participatory Approaches to Local Governance: Learning the Lessons from Abroad”. In National Civic Review, Volume 93, Issue 4, pp16–27, Winter 2004.

There are also other measures that enlarge the space for citizens to participate in governance. These include the introduction of incentives and performance systems that reward responsiveness to community participation, the formulation of service or governance standards, or organizational learning processes (such as governance assessments) that invite monitoring by communities and stimulate attitude change.

Case Study: Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), Rajastan, India

Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), which means Organization for the Empowerment of Workers and Peasants, offers a remarkable and interesting case study. It shows how a social movement is able to mobilize enough support to put pressure on government to enlarge the invited space for participation and accountability. It was presented at the Oslo Governance Forum by Aruna Roy, founder of MKSS.

MKSS started as a social movement in 1994, when workers on government employment works in villages of central Rajasthan discovered that they were not being paid the standard minimum wage and, despite increased spending, rural infrastructure did not exist, or was sub-standard. They decided to demand copies of the accounts of money spent in their name either as payment of wages or on infrastructure. This was the beginning of what has become known as the MKSS movement for the people’s right to information.

In its early years there was no legal entitlement to access relevant information even within the panchayat (the lowest tier of government in India), and MKSS had to rely on informal means and sympathetic officials for access to these documents. Once procured, though, the records were closely examined by the local people. Public hearings were organized where residents came together to verify and audit the work of their panchayat through individual and collective testimonies. In this way, the demand for transparency, accountability, and redress through social audit began to take shape. The first public hearing that MKSS organized in December 1994 established the importance of information for the people, and exposed the official opposition to disclosure of records. This initiated the struggle for the people’s right to information.

When government officials refused to part with records, and the Rajasthan Chief Minister failed to keep assurances made to the State Assembly in 1995, a three-year struggle ensued to secure relevant amendments in the Panchayati Raj Act and enact a comprehensive legal entitlement for the people’s right to information. In July 1997, the Government of Rajasthan amended the Panchayati Raj rules. The Rajasthan State Right to Information Act was formally passed by the state legislature in May 2000 as the campaign increased in visibility and popularity.

To enable all Indian citizens to benefit from the right to information and to strengthen its legal base, a national campaign was launched in 1996. That led to the passing of the (somewhat diluted) Freedom of Information Act in 2002. In response to protests that the national law was weak and ineffective, the UPA government promised a better law. Despite bureaucratic subterfuge, and resistance from various quarters, vigilance and advocacy by citizens groups helped ensure that a strong right to information legislation was passed by the Indian Parliament in June 2005. This came into effect on 12 October 2005.

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Citizens have since used the law in several parts of the country, albeit with varying degrees of success. Despite the passage of the law, it is clear that the powerful bureaucracy-politician nexus continues to drag its feet on implementation, frustrating efforts to bring in transparency and openness. The sustained denial of access to information reinforces the notion that information is power, and those that have it are rarely disposed to share it. MKSS therefore continues its struggle for a better legal framework for access to information so that those charged with governing do so in the interests of their constituencies.

Conclusion

MKSS is good example of how, through an innovative use of non-electoral democratic space, social movements or civil society can claim space for their own participation in governance. It also demonstrates that taking it a step further can enlarge the space for every citizen in India to participate actively in matters that concern their development or governance. It also shows that even when such space is secured through legislation, it requires active citizenship to make use of that space, because those in power will not readily give it up.

More information

Please see the MKSS website www.mkssindia.org or please contact MKSS at mkssrajasthan@gmail.com

PRINCIPLE 7: COMMIT TO TRANSPARENCYAND ACCESS TO INFORMATION

For social accountability to be eff ective there need to be organized andcapable citizens; vibrant people movements and/or a CSO consortium;an environment that enables citizens to have the right and the means toget access to government-held information and data and governmentopenness in that there is a level of trust and a history of partnershipsbetween government and non-government. Marlon Lara Cornelio Global Youth Anti-Corruption Network

For ICTs to enhance civic engagement, the user experience is everything, and that means focusing on the ways citizens interact with ICT interfaces. Oscar Salazar Citivox

The principle in brief

Governance assessments need to be transparent and publicly available so that stakeholders and citizens have access to the results, method and process. Governance assessments should recognize that the innovative use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has the potential to reduce barriers to citizen participation in governance processes, and present novel opportunities for data collection, dissemination and coordination.

The importance of the principle

Information is power. Access to information is therefore critical if those in power are to be held accountable. It is therefore a vital prerequisite for transparency and social accountability, which is why it is often painstakinglyprotected by those in power.

The right to information is increasingly recognized as a fundamental democratic right, although it was already clearly articulated in Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights a half-century ago. Civil society campaigners around the world have incorporated the right to know into both their strategies andtheir tactics, with the hope that transparency will empower eff orts to change the behaviour of powerfulinstitutions by holding them accountable to the public.

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While there are praiseworthy examples of right-to-know reforms and related revisions of laws on public access to information in, for example, Mexico and India, we see that in many other countries, often in the name of anti-terrorism legislation, public access to information has in practice become more restricted. Even if information is made available to the public, it is usually selective and more related to policies and budgets than to actual implementation of policies and related expenditures.

Access to information that is intelligible to non-experts is critical, but not enough to create social accountability. For that to start happening, citizens need a voice, and such a voice is only created when citizens are organized and start analysing and using the information collectively. Case studies illustrate that once you unite these two factors, a powerful force emerges that can break down the walls that those in power have erected around themselves to hold on to their power, such as clientelistic systems, monopolies on information, and divide-and-rule practices, and thus contribute to positive social change.

According to the Asian Network for Social Accountability East Asia and Pacific, social media and ICT can play an important role in the democratization of knowledge and information, and in enhancing social accountability if four basic conditions are fulfilled:

1. Government openness; 2. Organized and capable citizens; 3. Access to information; and 4. Cultural sensitivity and contextual appropriateness.

Through social media, particularly mobile phones, governance assessments can reach an entirely new dimension of citizen involvement. Even in the poorest countries, mobile phone coverage is now wider than that of community radio, and also allows for direct interaction between service user and provider. Citizens can receive and provide information at almost no cost, especially if civil society organizations supporting the process enter into partnerships with telecom providers.

With these new media and techniques, assessments can become much cheaper. They can reach a larger proportion of the population, provide real time feedback on service delivery or governance related issues, and result in increased ownership by users as they can see the immediate impact of their contribution. Governance assessments also need to be contextualized and have to be properly introduced to the target group if they are to reach their potential. As Oscar Salazar of Citivox noted in his presentation at the Forum, ICT-based accountability initiatives fail not because of the technology, but because users do not have confidence that engaging with ICT will bring results.

Case Study: Global Youth Anti-Corruption Network

Marlon Cornelio, a youth activist from the Global Youth Anti-Corruption Network in the Philippines, presented two cases that highlight some of the points made above, and shows how ICT and social media can be used to generate or gain access to relevant governance information. Both initiatives focus on improving the quality of public education services.

The Global Youth Anti-Corruption Network consists of young activists, journalists, artists, musicians and ICT enthusiasts. From all over the globe, young leaders meet on the internet to share experiences, strategies, tools and lessons in fighting corruption and promoting good governance in different countries.

Experiences from the ground: Universidad Coherente

The Universidad Coherente was established in 2007 by students and young professionals to address access to, and the quality of, education at universities in Peru. Because normal protests had no impact, this group of students decided to facilitate an information-based engagement between students and the university administration.

Utilizing the access to information law, Universidad Coherente converts information from government agencies into infographics, which are easily understandable and useful to students. On the Universidad Coherente website, students can click on a map of Peru where all public universities are plotted. In an instant, students have access to information on the number of students enrolled, the school budget, and the average government spending per student. As in class, students can compare notes on universities that have the highest or lowest number of students correlated with their university budget. Visually revealing is the disparity between spending per student in the different universities. The site is designed to catch students’ attention, while at the same time encouraging them to ask: Why is the government spending more or less per student compared with the spending in other universities? Where and how is the budget spent?

With the information made accessible through ICT, students started asking their school administrations questions in a show of interest, which became the beginning of constructive engagement. In some instances, a series of demonstrations were held to demand greater accountability and transparency in the university budget.

One particularly illuminating finding was the high percentage of unutilized budgets among some state universities, while education services were lacking and teachers received dismal salaries. Thanks to student action this has changed in several universities (Figure 1).

Figure 1 Example of information provided by Universidad Coherente for one university in Peru

UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL TORIBIO RODRIGUEZ DE MENDOZA AMAZONAS (UNATAMAZONAS)

Poblacion Estudiantil (2010)1602

Presupuesto asignado (2011)S/.23.666.900,00

Presuesto annual por estudianteaprox. S/13.945,406

Portal InstucionalWWW.unatamazONas.edu.pe

GREEN – trends in total budgetRED – Under-expenditure

Fluente: Ministerio de Econimiay FinanzasElaboracion Universidad Coherente

02001

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23.7

0.6 0.11.3

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2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

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Experiences from the ground: CheckMySchool

CheckMySchool is a good example of how government – in this case, the Philippines Department of Education – can work with civil society organizations and parents to curb corruption in the sector. The initiative started in 2001 with a change in leadership in the Ministry of Education that was eager to improve its reputation as the most corrupt in the country. A small civil society organization (Government Watch) mobilized a group of citizen’s organizations to monitor the purchase and delivery of books to schools and the construction of classrooms. They provided this information to the Department, which led to a 50 percent reduction in the cost of books and construction of classrooms. As a result, the Department is now ranked as one of the country’s most trusted.

Over time, the project has grown and started making use of ICT to be able to cover the country’s 44,000 schools. The Department makes information available to CheckMySchool, which processes the data and publishes them on a website that is readily accessible to the public. The website provides information per school and asks citizens to monitor that what should be available in terms of teachers, books and classrooms, is actually available, and to check and report any discrepancies. These are immediately brought to the Department’s attention. The reports are validated and are now integrated into the Department’s regular monitoring and evaluation system, contributing to a further reduction in the costs of monitoring.

Conclusion

Both these examples show that citizens’ access to information enables them to monitor service provision, either by making use of the law or by building partnerships with the government by stressing the potential win-win situation of greater transparency. Creating such buy-in from government can be very difficult and time consuming, but is essential for the success of these initiatives.

They also show the importance of selecting and presenting information that is context-specific and easy for citizens to understand. The sense that their opinion or provision of information does count is a means of empowerment and can make a difference.

One of the most difficult elements in these initiatives is to mobilize and organize people, and to keep them interested and involved over a longer period – particularly after the situation has improved. The partnership with government and its appreciation of these initiatives are in this respect very important.

More information

Please contact Marlon Cornelio at cornelios25@gmail.com For more information on the Global Youth Anti-Corruption network http://voices-against-corruption.ning.com/For more information on Universidad Coherente, visit http://www.universidadcoherente.orgFor more information on CheckmySchool, visit www.checkmyschool.org

PRINCIPLE 8: ENCOURAGE A CULTUREOF EVIDENCE-BASED POLICY-MAKING

Everybody’s pocket in the village has a mobile phone nowadays. If we can turn this into a direct pipeline to the government, we will have the powerto complain and be heard. Shafi que Khan Field coordinator for the Samadhan programme.

The principle in brief

To foster a culture of evidence-based policy-making demands a critical mass of participants. Enabling groupsto engage in evidence-based debate requires support to their ability to produce, evaluate and use evidence. Attention should therefore be given to strengthening the capacity of academics, communities of practice,networks, think-tanks, research institutes, civil society (social movements, NGOs, and CBOs), national statistical offi ces, in-depth journalism and government administration.

The importance of the principle

Governance assessments, if of undisputable quality and presented appropriately as people’s information, canplay an important role in evidence-based policy development. Achieving this requires full ownership of themethodology and the data by the users, whether government, civil society or academia.

Most assessment or monitoring initiatives in which citizens are directly involved focus on policy implementation and service delivery. They aim to establish a direct link between service provider and service user. When workingwith ICT and social media, these initiatives have the potential to boost complaint and redress mechanisms,particularly at the local level, and thus contribute to improved social accountability.

The various presentations made at the Oslo Governance Forum suggest that three factors are critical for the success of these grassroots initiatives:

1. At the start of a project, it is important to ensure full cooperation from various levels of government, from decision-makers to front desk service providers; 2. Both end-users and service providers require a basic level of capacity to participate successfully in these initiatives. Service users need to be aware of the type and quality of services they are entitled to, and how to register complaints. Service providers, meanwhile, have to know how, for instance, to deal with complaints and how to use that information to improve planning; and 3. Support is needed from civil society organizations and local media to publicize issues and, if necessary, to apply pressure to the local government or other service providers to resolve issues raised by users, if not dealt with adequately by the service provider.

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Proper backstopping support to these types of initiatives is essential, especially in resource-poor environments, where the demand for services is always greater than the ability of the government to provide good quality services. Government cannot only respond to direct needs raised by citizens without prioritizing its abilities to deliver services in a planned manner. For example, responding to 10 broken standpipes consuming your budget, as the water department neglects major maintenance work because nobody complains until the system breaks down, is not very efficient from a perspective of connecting as many people as possible to water.

Case Study: Samadhan – Citizen’s Action for Governance

Samadhan – Citizen’s Action for Governance – is one of several citizen feedback mechanisms on MDG projects implemented by the UN Millennium Campaign in Koraput and Sehore in rural India. They aim to improve service providers’ delivery and accountability. The overall objective of the initiative is to improve the quality of local service delivery by strengthening citizens’ and civil society’s capacity to enforce accountability and demand for services through ICT tools and knowledge. Specifically, the initiative:

1. Promotes citizens’ feedback on local service delivery and real-time responses and corrective actions from government and service providers; 2. Facilitates citizen-state engagement on issues related to the effective and efficient delivery of local services; and 3. Enhances government accountability to citizens through media and communication initiatives that stimulate debate and encourage the engagement of multiple stakeholders.

Samadhan is an internet-based technology platform that enables citizens to track and provide feedback. It channels citizens’ voices on the performance and delivery of public services. There are various ways for citizens to send their reports and complaints – directly through the web, through an SMS message, by phoning the government’s toll-free number, or through a personal visit to the district office.

A technology hub is established for data handling and collation at the basic administrative unit level: the Collector’s Office. Once a complaint is filed, it is forwarded to the relevant ministry or department for action and response. After the service provider has taken action, a message is sent back to the complainant asking them to verify that the action has taken place and the issue is resolved. Apart from collating information on individual services and feedback mechanisms, the Samadhan system contributes to an in-depth analysis so that systemic problems can be identified and addressed.

Information on complaints is available to citizens, including CSOs and the media, in a client-friendly way so that pressure can be put on government to take any further necessary action. The portal also has a publicly visible map showing the volume of complaints. A red dot on a panchayat (local government unit) will grow as the number of complaints increases. The programme intends to integrate this citizen feedback mechanism into regular local government monitoring and evaluation systems.

A Washington Post article on the project reported that in October 2011, the programme received 530 complaints through text messages, such as “my water hand pump is not working,” “health worker is absent” and “the village bridge has collapsed in the rain.”

“Access to technology is changing our democratic idiom, and the mobile phone is a metaphor for this change,” says Shiv Visvanathan, a social anthropologist with the Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology in Gandhinagar. “People are demanding accountability from the government. And speed of service delivery is key.”10

10 From a news article written by Rama Lakshmi, “Indians use cellphones to plug holes in governance” – The Washington Post, Oct 28, 2011, available at http://news.mpnodes.info/2011/10/28/indians-use-cellphones-to-plug-holes-in-governance-the-washington-post/

Conclusion

Improved accountability ultimately depends on the ability of the ‘accounters’ to sanction or punish ‘accountees’ if they do not perform according to defined standards. Asked what the programme, the CSOs or the government itself are doing to ensure that service providers actually follow up and take action, Minar Pimple, Regional Director of the Asia/Pacific UN Millennium Campaign, said:

“As for the CSO/NGO follow-up actions, it is indeed an integral part of the communications and advocacy strategy that we are developing for the project. When the complaints are not resolved within a reasonable time, there is a scope to engage the media in raising the matter publicly, for instance. The platform provides for external as well as internal escalation. How effectively both will function depends on the capacities and political suaveness of both local administrators and CSOs/NGOs involved. As for the sanction/reward system, while we have started discussing at the central government level the idea of linking the Citizen Feedback Initiative with the existing performance evaluation system of the government, we are also looking at possibilities of designating blocks or local village governments to be recognized or awarded based on their speedy resolution of multiple grievances. The discussion is very much still ongoing”. And asked about the extent to which the project is managing to balance direct needs and improved responsiveness from service providers with improved ability to resolve problems more structurally, Mr Pimple said: “This is precisely what Samadhan’s reporting and analysis hope to address. In the Indian government system, even if local governments receive grievances or requests from citizens about particular services/ programmes, communications take place in a conventional paper-based method, and those papers tend to pile up over time without much systematic effort to analyse and synthesize. The value that the Samadhan platform adds in this respect is that anyone can easily pull out such reports and see the trends, which will help the local government make evidence-based decisions about the most effective and cost-efficient way of resolving an issue, such as investing in better maintenance versus fixing broken pipes. This dilemma will continue to haunt us for some time, as the grievance is related to delivery. But the administration needs to decide whether the systems and infrastructure to make that delivery efficient are functioning or not. If there is a bottleneck at that level, the platform provides the space to enter that data in so that it can be taken up at higher level, such as the District Planning Committee, which approves and allocates resources for all infrastructure and systems strengthening projects”.

While the project emphasizes improved service delivery and responsiveness, the evidence-based feedback mechanism has a much wider potential to influence and redistribute the allocation of resources, improve efficiency of service delivery and ultimately feed into policy development.

More information

Please contact Mr. Minar Pimple at minar.pimple@undp.org or Nanako Tsukahara at nanako.tsukahara@undp.org or visit Samadhan’s websites at http://koraput.samadhan.org.in/ or http://sehore.samadhan.org.in/

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PRINCIPLE 9: EMBED THE GOVERNANCEASSESSMENT IN POLITICAL REALITIES

Democracy has gained a moral victory, but the problem is the ineffi ciencyof democratic rule; it has to serve the people better than any other system,if not, in the long run it will lose. Erik Solheim Norwegian Minister of Development and Environment

In this century, democracy has to answer to its own worst enemy, the abilityto provide eff ective and responsive services. Thomas Carothers Vice President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Social accountability is not just about seeking technical solutions totechnical problems. It is fundamentally political and requires politicalanalysis of the potential of an intervention.John Clark Principal at the Policy Practice

The principle in brief

Deepening political economy analysis ensures the contextual relevance of assessments. Governance is acomplex process involving multiple institutions at diff erent levels. It is important to recognize that reforminggovernance is an ongoing socio-political process rather than a technical fi x. Assessments, therefore, needto transcend narrow project objectives, and be undertaken with an acknowledgement that they are both atechnical and a political process.

The importance of the principle

To date there have been few governance assessments which have looked at the processes that create, sustain andtransform power relationships head on, or that have successfully integrated a political economy analysis andare able to unravel the existing power structures that determine the allocation of (public) resources. Manyspeakers at the Forum noted a global shift from diff erences in wealth between countries towards increasinginternal diff erences in wealth and access to resources within countries themselves. There is also an increasingdemand for deepened accountability by those who are excluded from access to wealth, services or resources.If strengthened democratic governance is to continue to deliver to all and not to an exclusive elite only,governance assessments do need to eff ectively integrate a political economy analysis.

Political economy analysis is concerned with the interaction of political and economic processes in a society. OECD-DAC describes it as involving the distribution of power and wealth between different groups and individuals, and the processes that create, sustain and transform these relationships over time. It goes beneath formal structures to reveal the underlying interests, incentives and institutions that enable or frustrate change. Such insights are important if we are to advance challenging agendas around governance, economic growth and service delivery, which, as shown by experience, do not lend themselves to technical solutions alone.

Institutional and context analysis assumptions and questions are similar to those that underpin political economy analyses. However, institutional and context analysis is intended to provide a general approach to development matters, which may not be purely economic in nature. Although it looks closely at the political and economic factors that play a role in development interventions, it goes beyond those dimensions to facilitate a more holistic understanding of very diverse contexts.

Institutional and context analysis is not a magic bullet with which to achieve better results, but it can help prevent failures and contribute to risk management. This type of analysis adds rigour to regular programming procedures, such as situation and risk analyses. It can also help in the understanding of how various interests and forces can influence the achievement of results; which entry points may prove most fruitful; the feasibility of formulating win-win scenarios; and alternative courses of action should things not go as planned and a change in strategy is needed.11

Of the 11 Oslo principles, this principle is probably the most difficult to realize in practice due to its complexity and political sensitivity. But it is important. Not considering the political-economy context might contribute to a governance assessment that fails to address the misuse of power as a core governance problem, one that contributes to elite capture and the marginalization of vulnerable groups in society. The outcomes of such assessments are readily accepted by the political elite. This is because there is a tendency for them to develop technical fixes to the governance system that, once implemented, merely reinforce the status quo and are irrelevant for those who demand change. Assessments, therefore, need to transcend narrow project objectives, and be undertaken with an acknowledgement that they are both a technical and political process.

In many countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, the formal structures and institutions of a modern democratic state are indeed established, but they remain weak and are often overshadowed by strong patronage relationships. The allocation of resources is less dependent on the formulation of policies and administrative procedures, and much more on directing privileges at particular individuals or groups (clients) in a way that is intended to strengthen political support. in order to get access to public resources, knowing the right person is often more important than knowing the laws and policies. To a large extent, these informal structures therefore dictate how public resources are allocated. Consequently, little is done to increase the reach of critical basic services to society’s most marginalized people.

Supporting democratic governance through governance assessments cannot be limited to strengthening the functioning of formal state structures without also understanding and, where possible, finding means to countervail the negative impact of existing informal structures.

10 UNDP (2012): Institutional and Context Analysis – A Guidance Note.

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In recent years, various tools for political economy analysis have been developed. These include DFID’s Drivers of Change approach, SIDA’s Power Analysis, UNDP’s Institutional and Context Analysis, and the World Bank’s Problem Driven Governance and Political Economy framework.12 While there are various examples of how an in-depth understanding of the political economy can be integrated in project design by CSOs, there has only been very limited integration into actual governance assessments to date. If governance assessments are to remain at the leading edge of developments in governance and democracy, if the development community is to move from a third to a fourth generation of tools that are not merely relevant to donors, to government or civil society but also to the people themselves, they must integrate political economy analysis as a core feature.

Case Study: Local Governance Barometer

The Local Governance Barometer is one of the few governance assessment tools that tries to integrate political realities into the assessment at the local government level. It is not a power analysis tool, because it aims to analyse governance more comprehensively at a local level. But it does enhance the understanding by local level stakeholders of the use or misuse of power for resource allocation.

The point of departure for the Local Governance Barometer assessment is a ‘Global Model’ of good local governance, using the following dimensions or criteria of good governance that are particularly relevant at the local level:

• Effectiveness and efficiency: the way in which planned activities are realized and expected results are achieved cost-effectively; • Rule of law and transparency: the application, compliance and enforcement of legislation and policies regulating local government and safeguarding the division of power between legislative and executive institutions, as well as the way in which information about decisions made by various actors is made available to citizens; • Accountability: the extent to which the administration and politicians explain and justify decisions taken to internal supervisory bodies (administrative accountability), to political actors (political accountability) and to their constituents and the public at large (social accountability); • Participation and civic agency: measures not only the space offered by government for citizens to participate in the development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of local governance processes, but also the agency of civil society and its ability to claim space for participation; and • Equity: the extent to which there is equal access to municipal services and inclusiveness amongst citizens in municipal developmental activities.

These abstract criteria are extensively discussed by a range of stakeholders and translated into measurable proxy indicators and scoring statements. Those indicators stay close to the local reality and can easily be understood by everyone involved in the assessment process. The resulting statements are formulated in a positive way and participants are asked to declare to what extent they agree or disagree with each and, where possible, to provide examples and concrete evidence. Collectively, the 100-plus statements can be seen as a practical standard of what good governance means within the local context. Participants will often take a blank questionnaire away with them, as it becomes their own benchmark for good governance in their municipality.

10 See UNDP: Institutional and Context Analysis, forthcoming.

The questionnaire has a strong focus on underlying power structures. But it is the process of interviewing individual stakeholder groups separately – before plenary dialogue begins – and an emphasis on relating governance aspects to real issues (e.g., non-transparent functioning of tender boards or housing allocation committees) that allows a discussion and analysis of power relationships.

The actual assessment at municipal level takes about a week to implement. It begins with a set of one-day workshops for each stakeholder group. Depending on the setting, five or six stakeholder groups are identified. They consist of councillors, government staff (both from central and local government), civil society organizations, ward committees, business sector representatives and, where appropriate, traditional authorities. These groups, with 20-30 representatives each, fill out the questionnaire and discuss and select the most important practical governance issues they have identified. The composition of stakeholder groups is important to avoid intimidation and for the groups to be able to discuss real life governance issues from their own perspective. Good facilitation ensures that issues can be discussed during a plenary session in a depersonalized way – for example, not asking why “our mayor is corrupt”, but “why do we collectively allow people to misuse the system?”

The differences in scoring by the stakeholder groups are used to start a dialogue (“why do councillors score high on transparency and CSOs low?”) and help the participants to understand that governance is not defined by a single truth.

Experiences from the ground

Idasa recently implemented a Local Governance Barometer exercise in Kabwe Municipal Council, Zambia. The civil society and business scores on transparency were very low (21 out of 100), while those from the councillors were relatively high (55). Discussion of the underlying motivation for these scores revealed that they were related to negligence of rule of law and lack of transparency within the council. Digging deeper, it became clear that in recent years a limited number of plots for commercial and residential use were surveyed and demarcated in Kabwe. Since the demand for new plots far exceeded the number of surveyed plots, the council had established a committee of councillors that was in charge of allocating these plots. As a result of this allocation exercise, most plots ended up in the hands of the councillors themselves (or their relatives), who subsequently sold them to other residents and business people for huge profits. A heated debate followed, during which the councillors argued that they acted within the boundaries of the land law, which stipulates that everyone is entitled to a maximum of five plots. The citizens were not aware of these regulations and considered the allocation process unfair and an abuse of power, because not everyone had an equal chance of obtaining a plot. They also believed that selling the plots on for huge profits was irregular. While the conflict was not resolved completely at the end of the meeting, the councillors agreed that they understood the grievances and would be willing to consider discussing the matter further and adjusting or developing local bylaws that would make the allocation process more transparent and fair.

Conclusion

The Local Governance Barometer is simultaneously a learning and assessment tool. By discussing the principle of democratic governance and using a learning-based approach that begins with the idea that behavioural change in citizens is achieved by reflecting on their own actions, and the realization that the present reality is not the exclusive reality, subjects become citizens who are able to hold their duty bearers to account.

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While the Local Governance Barometer has not integrated a full political economy analysis, it does enable local actors to start addressing the misuse of office and politically sensitive issues that hamper progress when they engage as equal partners. This can be achieved in a depersonalized manner that can actively and collectively address the more systemic issues of poor governance.

More information

Please contact Idasa at www.idasa.org.za or pvanhoof@idasa.org or see the Local Governance Barometer at http://www.pact.mg/lgb/lgb/interface/

The Local Governance Barometer was developed by Idasa, Pact Madagascar and SNV Netherlands Development Organization with financial support from CIDA, SIDA and SDC.

PRINCIPLE 10: ALIGN WITH NATIONAL DEVELOPMENTPRIORITIES AND POLITICAL VISION

Governance assessments were in the past often located in the contextof aid accountability and eff ectiveness. Assessments have now also movedinto the realm of policy-making processes. While donors have a legitimate need for assessment tools to track results in aid allocations, it is in the fi eldof social accountability and policy-making where assessments have themost potential. Nils Boesen Director Capacity Development Group, UNDP

The principle in brief

An assessment should be based on priorities and reform processes defi ned by citizens, their organizations and national stakeholders. These priorities may manifest themselves in the form of development plans and sector strategies, or more deeply rooted processes for strengthening democratic governance, widening political space, and consolidating peace.

The importance of the principle

To support national ownership of a governance assessment and to prevent it from being donor-driven, it isimportant to assess in advance – i.e. during a political economy context analysis – how a governance assessmentcould link with, and support, ongoing in-country policy development processes, or the implementation ofnationally-owned development plans. If linked to, for example, a governance improvement programme or thedevelopment of a monitoring and evaluation system for a national development plan, the chances of gainingpolitical buy-in for such an assessment from the highest political echelons increase tremendously. The chancesthat the results are actually going to be used in practice after completion also increase. In addition, it enhancesthe sustainability of the governance assessment if it becomes integrated in regular monitoring and evaluationpractices. This is particularly the case if improvements in local capacity for data collection and data managementare part of the initial governance assessment programme.

By defi ning indicators and targets that are integrated into existing or emerging monitoring and evaluationsystems, a governance assessment can actually contribute to national plans being implemented as intended.This will also help to reach the poorer segments of society. And if such assessments can involve a diverse group of stakeholders in the consultation process, they could increase the development focus and therefore the legitimacy of these plans and gain support from a broad spectrum of actors in society outside government.

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Tuning a governance assessment to ongoing in-country policy processes sounds ideal, but requires a large amount of flexibility from the implementing and funding organizations. Many more bureaucratic hurdles need to be overcome, while the assessment is also drawn into the political arena. This, of course, is what an assessment should be, but it can lead to serious delays in implementation. It could also be subject to attempts by politicians to highjack the assessment for their own political agendas, and to a struggle to safeguard other principles for a ‘good’ governance assessment, such as its inclusivity, the expansion of democratic space, or its integration into a political economy analysis.

Case Study: Monitoring the National Programme on Good Governance in Senegal

In Senegal, a governance assessment was implemented to operationalize and reinvigorate the National Programme on Good Governance.

The need for a nationally-owned governance monitoring system in Senegal became evident through a diagnostic study, which examined current practices in governance monitoring. The study showed that most data currently collected track resources and activities, but do not measure the results and impact of governance interventions. The study also pointed to the fact that governance data are mainly collected to meet donor reporting requirements, but are rarely used for planning and decision-making by national actors.

In an effort to better align governance monitoring with the National Programme on Good Governance and to enhance the quality of governance monitoring in Senegal in general, the DREAT (a unit responsible for the coordination of all governance projects in Senegal), with support from UNDP’s Global Programme on Governance Assessments, embarked on a participatory process for developing a national governance monitoring framework.

The process started by establishing a steering committee with representatives from a broad group of stakeholders. Its aim was to enhance local ownership and to ensure that the data needs of all these groups were integrated into the monitoring system. The committee also guarantees that the data will become publicly available.

The data collection methods were then selected, resulting in a governance monitoring system that is breaking new ground in a number of ways. In terms of content, it is the first nationally developed attempt (anchored in government) to assess the quality of governance in Senegal. And in methodology, it creatively combines household survey data to measure the demand side of good governance, and administrative data to measure the supply side. The intended output is a set of well-rounded results.

The stakeholders involved in the process have said that the approach has resulted in a strong monitoring and evaluation system that is tuned to the expected outputs of the National Programme on Good Governance’s six programme components: Local Governance, Justice, Public Administration, Economic Governance, Parliament, and ICT (e-governance).

The participatory process that designed the methodology has also enabled leading civil society organizations with experience in measuring governance in Senegal to contribute to its fine-tuning. This experience proved catalytic in creating “a decisive crack in the wall, which had hitherto isolated the administration from the research community.”

While the data have been collected, the first report was planned to be launched after the presidential elections in Senegal had taken place (26 February 2012).

Although the results are commendable, the aim of policy integration of governance assessments with national ownership entails certain trade-offs that need to be considered carefully when adopting such an approach:

• Donors want improved information on the quality of governance, but are reluctant to pay for it. This can be resolved by involving them as stakeholders from the outset. This will enhance their understanding of both the complexity and the value added by such national monitoring systems. It may also increase their willingness to contribute to follow-up activities, e.g., to invest in the institutionalization of such a system; • To secure strong local ownership, one has to work with in-country expertise, which might delay the process but will pay dividends in the longer-term; • In a pilot phase, the scope of the assessment has to be manageable. It is therefore wise to limit it to monitoring the achievements of the National Programme and to resist any temptation to assess the country’s overall governance situation; • Integrating the governance assessment in a larger government-owned programme automatically means that the progress of that programme, and its institutional architecture (including frequent changes in key positions, leading to some unfortunate loss of ‘champions’), dictates the pace of the assessment. Governance programmes are politically sensitive and can therefore easily face serious delays or derailments; • Government is interested in the outcome of the assessment, but wants to be able to control its outcome and restrict access to information if not favourable; and • When linking up with a country-wide governance programme, there is the need to institutionalize the monitoring and evaluation system and the data utilization strategy from the start. Equally, it is imperative to test it and ‘show results’ early on. The two efforts should be carried out simultaneously, rather than sequentially.

Conclusion

Linking governance assessments to existing policies and ongoing reform processes enlarges the chances of it becoming integrated into regular monitoring and evaluation systems. It can also create, depending on the political situation, supplementary positive spin-offs, such as the involvement of non-state actors in an ‘official’ monitoring process and increased public trust in, and access to, governance data. It does, however, require a high level of flexibility and a long-term commitment from the supporting partners.

Critical factors for the sustainability of a project like this are:

• An institutional architecture that officially assigns responsibility for governance monitoring to a specific structure, along with adequate financial and human resources to fulfil this mandate (in Senegal, a decree was passed in December 2011, instructing this structure to produce an annual report on governance, based on the data collected); • Enhanced in-country capacity for data collection; • Increased public awareness on the importance of governance for equitable and efficient development, and increased public demand to continue monitoring; • Donor buy-in to align their monitoring and evaluation to the country-owned initiative, and government starting to use this locally-owned evidence in donor negotiations; and • Government starting to see benefits from an open and participatory approach to diagnosing governance issues.

More information

On the Global Programme on Governance Assessments, please visit www.gaportal.org On the programme in Senegal, see www.gaportal.org/undp-supported/senegal For specific information on the above project, please contact Marie Laberge at marie.laberge@undp.org

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PRINCIPLE 11: SUPPORT DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE ASSESSMENTS AT THE LOCAL LEVEL

Listening to grassroots concerns should drive the selection of whatneeds to be assessed. John Clark Principal, The Policy Practice

The principle in brief

Local governance assessments should not be a translation or simplifi cation of national assessments. Localassessments need to include a focus on the capacities of local government institutions to respond to localneeds as well as the capacities of citizens to hold local government institutions to account.

The importance of the principle

It is at the local level where citizens and the state interact directly, where children enjoy education services,where mothers receive postnatal care, where an entrepreneur applies for a licence to start a shop. It is herewhere the impact of good or bad governance is felt most and where a large part of the legitimacy of thegovernment is made or broken. It is therefore imperative for the local government to adhere to the principles of good governance in order to strengthen its legitimacy. If local government is not accountable to its citizens oris not suffi ciently responsive to the expressed needs of its citizens, people will lose confi dence and trust in theirlocal government and in the formal processes that are established to regulate interaction and communication. Depending on the situation and context, this can either result in apathy and low voter turnout at local elections,or it can lead to violent protests by citizens if they perceive the regular communication structures to beineff ective or the local government institutions irresponsive to their grievances.

If poverty is understood not only as lack of opportunities for a decent livelihood and basic necessities, but also asexclusion from decision-making processes, improving the quality of governance at the local level forms a vitalelement in combating the structural causes of poverty and inequality. Inadequate governance at the local levelaff ects the poor in many ways, often enhancing exclusion. Lack of participation in decision-making processesmeans that poor people often have no choice in determining their own development needs and priorities. As a result:

• Bureaucratic, complex and non-transparent municipal administrative practices lead to lower revenues, which results in less spending on social programmes to benefi t the poor; • Non-responsive allocation of resources can lead to disproportionate spending on the priorities of the better-off rather than on those of the poor; • Non-transparent land allocation practices push the poor to the urban periphery and hazardous areas prone to earthquakes, landslides and fl oods, depriving them of secure access to a major productive asset; and • Poor women are even more severely aff ected by these phenomena as they often shoulder the major burden of household responsibilities and are even more vulnerable to exploitation.

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Democratic local governance is thus both a means and an end. It is a means by which to achieve the goals of human development and it is an end in itself – as values, policies and institutions that are governed by human rights principles, i.e. equality and non-discrimination, participation and inclusiveness, accountability and the rule of law, thus consolidating the legitimacy of the state in the eyes of its citizens.

If governance is important, then measuring governance is also important, because the drivers of these processes need to know whether or not the objectives of improved governance are achieved, or whether related steering mechanisms need to be adjusted. Assessments of decentralized governance are essential in objectively informing the specific policies and programmes at the sub-national level, for making judgements about patterns and trends, i.e., whether certain aspects of governance are better or worse than others in a particular district or town, whether the quality of governance is improving or deteriorating, and whether those trends apply uniformly across the country.

It is important to understand that assessing decentralized governance is not simply a disaggregated form of national governance assessments. Assessments of decentralized governance provide important information on issues specific to the local level, such as policies vis-à-vis decentralization, participation and local accountability. One of the main differences between national and local governance assessments is the latter’s greater proximity to real-life issues. Therefore, local assessments need to be more sensitive to the particular needs of groups of stakeholders and certain segments of the local community. Because of this proximity of service providers and service users, they can, and should be, included in the actual assessment.

Recently, we therefore see the emergence of local governance assessment tools that aim to assess and strengthen both the demand and supply side of governance. Increasingly, these tools focus more on facilitating a dialogue process between stakeholders at the local level in order to stimulate collective learning through reflection, rather than objectively measuring the quality of governance as such.

Case Study: Economic Literacy and Budget Accountability for Governance

Economic Literacy and Budget Accountability for Governance (ELBAG) is a process and framework that combines organizing people, developing grounded monitoring mechanisms, democratizing knowledge (particularly on economics) and using participatory tools and methods for building public accountability and transparency at the local level. It creates space where people can discuss the economy and use it as an entry point to build inclusive and authentic democracy. The aim is to ensure participation of poor and excluded people, facilitate people’s empowerment, reduce corruption and increase accountability in the processes of governance and policy making, particularly in budget formulation, execution and economic policy.

The ELBAG process promotes popular mobilization, bringing people together to claim economic justice. Through the use of processes that promote dialogue, debate and collective action, such mobilization enables citizens to question, influence, challenge and change unjust development.

ELBAG groups are organized around specific denial of rights or discrimination. Initial engagement is promoted by introducing economic literacy and analysing local economies and resource flows. Typically, groups may discuss their livelihoods and analyse their economics. Groups may study the state of local development – for example, infrastructure, public services such as schools, health centres, and extension services – analysing how public funds are used, and in the process analyse their own local area governance. Such collective analysis provides the basis for action to bring about tangible changes at the community level.

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ELBAG promotes people’s access to information. Examples taken from everyday household budgets are used to collectively study bigger governmental processes – for instance, how key budget decisions are made, or how policies such as the privatization of water or health are decided. Such collective learning creates demand within communities to seek access to information. In the process, it also creates transparency and accountability in both public and private entities.

Groups are supported to have at their disposal instruments and tools developed through the efforts of movements and NGOs in various parts of the world. Whereas some of the approaches that ELBAG draws on are well established, others are still being developed. The instruments and tools include basic economic literacy, budget analysis, social audits, public hearings, people’s report cards/opinion polls and poverty dialogues, participatory budgeting and planning, reflection methods, assemblies, community newspapers, radio, and wallpapers or other public information processes. Community groups and other forums are supported to form vertical and horizontal relationships with the media, think-tanks, platforms and movements to contribute to challenging new modes of neo-liberal discourse and practice that deepen institutional bias in the economic policy and budgetary system in favour of the already powerful. With the support of ActionAid, citizens groups, social movements and NGOs in 22 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America are using the ELBAG approach to promote economic justice and democratization.

Country experiences

NigeriaIn 2008, ActionAid Nigeria conducted a training session in Enugu for about 30 participants, including government officials and civil society organizations, in the use of ELBAG tools. The training also covered media involvement and public sharing of information on the budget processes and allocation by the state government. The analysis of the state budget was shared publicly at the end of the workshop. That gave an opportunity to draw to the attention of the public the amount and proportion of the budget allocated to each sector in the state.

The budget analysis revealed that the state government had allocated no money to HIV/AIDS in the preceding three years. Through its representatives present at the workshop, the government realized the implication this might have on its image among the citizens of Enugu state, where the incidence of HIV/AIDS is above the national average. As a result, the government immediately directed its officials and announced an allocation of N3 million to the HIV and AIDS programmes in 2008.

EthiopiaIn 2007, Radio Fana, with support from ActionAid Ethiopia, began a governance radio programme that involved community dialogue forums. The programme created an opportunity for the populations of four major cities to meet with municipal administrators and discuss issues related to malpractices in service provision. More than 1000 city dwellers participated in each forum, which were broadcasted over 21 weeks.

As a result of these public discussions and the radio programme’s influence, some government officials took swift action against municipality administrations that were held responsible for identified malpractices. Consequently, more than 15 officials were dismissed from their post, including the head of administration in one municipality, while in another municipality the structural set-up of administration was changed.

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UgandaActionAid Uganda, together with the Mbarara District Civil Society network, trained voluntary budget community monitors from Rwanyamahembere and Biharwe sub-counties in budget analysis, legal framework and advocacy. The monitors were also exposed to the planning and budgeting framework of the sub-county local government.

This led to the communities developing budget priorities, which were used as a basis of reviewing 2008/9 the sub-county plans. These plans and budgets included the priorities that had been established. That motivated communities to prepare to engage with the subsequent budget process. Gershom Masiko from Biharwe sub-county said, “We are happy that the sub-county budget has included some of the priorities we listed last time when we met with you. We would like to ask that the next year’s budget looks into issues that were left out.”

Conclusion

Local governance assessments usually focus on very practical issues that require direct attention and action. With proper support that is sustained over a longer period, these assessments will have also have a greater structural and long-lasting impact.

• Citizens quickly understand the link between service delivery and governance when the underlying causes of specific problems in their municipality are discussed; • Citizens develop awareness of how democratic institutions function and how they can play their role in governance. When the process begins, an eagerness to understand local government regulations and expected behaviour of government officials soon develops. This allows citizens to assess whether government officials’ behaviour is in line with these regulations and offers a base with which they can hold them accountable; and • Citizens become aware of their right to critically question duty bearers. They become accustomed to the processes through which they can utilize these rights in a manner that will not negatively affect them.

More information

An overview of 25 local governance assessment tools can be found in UNDP’s A User’s Guide to Measuring Local Governance at http://gaportal.org/publication/users-guide-to-measuring-local-governance

For more information on ELBAG, please visit www.elbag.org

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The most important lesson learned at the Oslo Governance Forum, both from the keynote speakers andfrom the case studies, is that governance assessments are most valuable when they help citizens to understandand analyse their own governance reality. By helping people to refl ect on their present governance realityand compare it to the way governance should be, as it is in most cases already defi ned in existing lawsor regulations, people will start to question their present situation and start to demand accountability, or work towards social change as we saw in the cases from Brazil, India, Nepal, and Zambia.

Governance assessments are, however, no panacea to bad governance and abuse of power. But the case studies presented at the Forum clearly show that the new generation of governance assessments have a better abilityto contribute to social change processes at both local and national level. They off er evidence of, and alternatives to, bad governance and misuse of power that citizens themselves can use to hold government to account. As many cases demonstrated, governance assessments that talk to the people, that provide “peoples’ information” have a huge mobilizing potential and can stimulate active citizenship.

Providing and securing the right to this peoples’ information is the most important role national civil society organizations can play in this process. They should secure, defend and promote the right of access to publicinformation and help citizens gain access to the information they are entitled to. This is fundamental toachieving any form of social accountability. The space for civil society to operate freely, and their ability to claim that space, needs to be nurtured continuously, because governments will not change their behaviour andimplement measures to improve governance without external pressure from society.

The challenge for the coming years in further developing and popularizing governance assessments for socialaccountability will be to expand the scope of these initiatives and to link local and national initiatives.In all case studies, the process of enhancing awareness, of collecting information and supporting citizensduring mobilization is costly and labour intensive. The process takes a long time before results start to show,and there is usually limited outreach beyond the communities that are directly involved.

In this respect, practitioners have started to see the potential of social media and ICT and to use these toolto lower the costs of data collection and dissemination, to accelerate feedback processes and to increase theoutreach of governance assessments as we saw in the cases of Peru, the Philippines, and the DemocraticRepublic of Congo.

Further development and integration of political economy analysis into the assessments are also needed. With an increasing focus on improved social accountability as the objective of governance assessments, governanceassessments now concentrate more on processes of resource allocation and the use and abuse of political power. It is therefore not suffi cient to assess the functioning of formal institutions only. This is particularly thecase in societies where informal structures largely dictate the way in which public resources are allocated,which all too often lead to minimal improvements in services for society’s most marginalized people.

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Implications for UNDP In recent decades, UNDP, through its Governance Centre and Democratic Governance Programme, has played a leading role in developing governance assessment tools that are at the forefront of the governance field. These have responded to emerging demands and are founded in a powerful conviction that democracy and development are interrelated. While poverty persists, there is no true freedom, and where freedom is restricted, poverty will persist.

Sarah Lister, Democratic Governance Advisor at the UNDP Oslo Governance Centre, maintains that UNDP needs to better understand and demonstrate the relationship between democratic governance and the broad concerns of sustainable human development, environmental issues, and the imperative of inclusive and equitable growth.

UNDP has a widely recognized role to play in further strengthening people’s participation in the affairs of state and governance. It does this by building the capacities and institutions that can effectively protect people’s rights and move inclusive development and growth forward. From that perspective, the Forum advised UNDP (to continue) to: • Build genuine citizen demand for democratic governance; • Learn from the experiences of civil society actors and activists; • Involve more practitioners from the South; • Encourage exchanges of knowledge, methods, and tools; • Improve its own political analysis of governance assessments; • Create more ‘mediating spaces’ between different stakeholders; • Continue strengthening its virtual resource centre for governance assessments; and • Develop tools and approaches that can create policy space for long-term decision-making to address the major challenges of climate change and economic disparity.

Feedback from participants

“You go somewhere with no expectations at all. You’ve already been to so many gatherings full of brilliant and capable people, where the result does little more than repeat and confirm what you already knew. One problem in promoting democracy and its values is that the crowd is usually so homogenous that no new light is shed on the subject. But this was different. The degree of freedom that the diversity of participants gave was much higher than usual. There were leaders of all sorts, with hard, real life experience in defending rights. They were far from shy in expressing the problems they face, including criticism of the international elite. The way the Forum was organized allowed people to express themselves fully in their interaction with peers. There was enough time to interact individually with many of them, the crowd was big enough – and small enough – to allow that. And because the venue forced people to stay and interact, there was nothing else to do, and nowhere to go.”

“The Forum was surprisingly interesting. I learned much, but was also able to renew my faith in the power of collective interaction. I emerged convinced that, inasmuch as we are able to continue exchanging experiences, knowledge and opinions, the world will be a better place. That is more – by far – than is normally the case in a gathering such as this. The Forum was a place where new ideas and learning were aired so that the practice of governance around the world could be improved.”

United Nations Development ProgrammeBureau for Development PolicyDemocratic Governance Group304 East 45th Street, 10th Fl.New York, NY 10017 Oslo Governance CentreInkognitogata 37, 0256 Oslo, Norway www.oslogovernanceforum.org