Suchergebnisse

Social accountability has become an important new buzzword among development actors seeking to understand the forms of state-society synergy that may be supportive of better public services. Advocates suggest demand-side initiatives are key to increasing the power of the poor in service provision, while sceptics question the application of technical fixes to complex political challenges. This article reports findings from qualitative research into the political capabilities outcomes achieved among local health and education stakeholders through the social accountability interventions of a non-governmental organisation (NGO) in Western Uganda. It argues that NGOs are unlikely to generate substantive advances for social accountability in agrarian contexts characterised by patronage politics without organising marginalised groups themselves to tackle the causes of their disadvantage.

Calls to deepen levels of social accountability within social protection interventions need to be informed by the now extensive experience of promoting social accountability in developing countries. Drawing on a systematic review of over 90 social accountability interventions, including some involving social protection, this paper shows that politics and context are critical to shaping their success. We argue that the politics of social protection and of social accountability resonate strongly with the broader project of transforming state-society relations in developing countries. This requires a reconceptualisation of social accountability and social protection in terms of the broader development of 'social contracts', and that the current emphasis on promoting bottom-up forms of accountability needs to be balanced by efforts to strengthen and legitimise public authority in developing countries.

1. Introduction: Why do NGOs need to negotiate knowledge? p. 1. - 2. What do we mean by evidence-based advocacy? Ideas from NGOs in Malawi p. 17. - 3. What sense does it make? Vocabularies of practice and knowledge creation in a development NGO p. 29. - 4. Legitimacy and knowledge production in NGOs p. 47. - 5. Knowledge and conditional participation of civil society organizations in India's urban governance regime p. 59. - 6. Research for development alternatives: inter-elite relations and grass-roots knowledge in Western Uganda p. 75. - 7. Progress towards effective knowledge sharing in an NGO p. 93. - 8. 'I have not seen a single person use it': NGOs, documentation centres and knowledge brokering in development p. 111. - 9. NGOs and the evidence-based policy agenda p. 129. - 10. Conclusion: negotiating knowledge, evidence, learning and power p. 147