Suchergebnisse

A state's accountability to its citizens for public service delivery constitutes a central component of the democratic polity. But how to assure this accountability? The answer lies in the linkage between citizens and some combination of elected political leaders and those they direct to provide the services. In India over recent decades, a host of mechanisms has emerged to provide that linkage, some of them quite potent. Building on the World Bank's 2003 principal–agent model of long and short routes to state accountability, this article argues for a distinct third civil society route. It then explores the paths these three routes can take and their potential effectiveness in providing citizens a number of institutional mechanisms to hold political leaders and public service providers accountable, improve service delivery, empower poor people and ultimately enhance well-being.

In countries emerging from authoritarianism into democracy, citizens have little preparation for participating in the new political dispensations they face. Adult civic education promises a way to jump-start the lifelong socialization experience that their counterparts in the long-established democracies enjoy. But do these brief crash-courses in democracy really have any impact? Recent surveys of civic education efforts sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development in the Dominican Republic, Poland and South Africa find that those taking part in the programmes do participate significantly more in local level politics and, to a somewhat lesser extent, in politics more generally as well. There is also evidence that non-elites can benefit more from such programmes and begin to close the participation gap that separates them from traditional elites. The overall gains in participation are, however, modest. But given that political participation in absolute terms has been quite low in both old and new democracies, it can be argued that even modest gains are important and make investment in civic education worthwhile. (Democratization/DÜI)

AbstractIn their book Administrative Decentralization: Strategies for Developing Countries, John Cohen and Steven Peterson construct a model they call 'institutional pluralism', which they contend is superior to more traditional modes of decentralization. It is characterized chiefly by multiple channels of service provision, thus inducing accountability into a sphere where previously there has been very little. While they restrict their analysis to the administrative realm, this article argues that the institutional pluralist model makes at least as much sense in political decentralization. Bolivia, which recently launched political reforms offering three separate structures linking citizen to state, serves as an excellent illustration of institutional pluralism in politics. This approach shows considerable promise for implementation in other settings, as can be seen in El Salvador, and a case can be made for its replication potential elsewhere as well. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Blair reviews 'The Experience of Poverty: Fighting for Respect and Resources in Village India' by Tony Beck.