Generating Genuine Demand with Social Accountability Mechanisms

The 3-Dimensional Communication Imperative
Unresponsive, unaccountable, inefficient, and ineffective public officials, private employers, or service providers abound in the bureaucracies and organizations of the developing world. These officials often do not answer to the citizenry for their policies, actions, and use of funds. These behaviors are symptomatic of more endemic systemic problems. On the supply side, these problems are often caused by the individual characteristics of the public officials that influence their behavior such as knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and personality traits as well as the socio-political and economic environment in which they operate. On the demand side, civil society may lack the capacity and voice to call for accountability.
According to Andrew and Shah (2003), on the supply side, constraints to accountability are exacerbated by low capacity, organizational centralization, service monopolies, social insulation, and poor evaluation. On the demand side, several scholars have, in turn, identified low levels of social capital and civic engagement as two major factors that lead to the lack of an informed and active civil society that does not yet demand accountability from their public officials (Putnam, 2000; Friedland & McLeod, 1999; Friedland & Shah, 2005; Frissen, 2004).
As a lasting solution, Andrew and Shah (2003) propose a model that combines participatory decentralization with results oriented management and evaluation to create a framework for reform that they expect will help change the behavior of public officials and counter some of the most glaring problems with governments in developing countries. Known as Citizen-Centered Governance, this framework focuses on developing participatory, localized structures through which citizens are empowered to demand better results from their governments and public officials thereby directly challenging the top-down governance models entrenched in the developing world.
Central to the solution proffered above by Andrew and Shah (2003) are the concepts of social capital, civic engagement, community and communication. According Friedland (2001, p. 1), “For democracy to work, community is necessary.” Expanding on this idea, Friedland (2001) draws from Habermas’s critical theory (1962/1989) and theory of communicative action (1981/1987) and postulates that citizens must have the opportunity for deliberation in public to discuss and formulate issues and problems that are important to them. These deliberations, according to Friedland (2001), at least should lead to the formation of public agendas that are publicized, acted upon and monitored. These discussions emerge from communities that possess inter-group and cross-network communication systems with the capacity to propel the discussions into the larger public sphere. In short, according to Friedland (2001), the overall democratic opportunities for any community are circumscribed by its communicative ability to enter into the larger political and economic systems.
In their own conceptualization of the relationships between community, communication and capacity to act, Rojas et al (2006) also acknowledge the need for communication networks in the community and in addition, emphasize that the content that flows in these networks is also important to the building of social capital and capacity for civic engagement. Anyaegbunam, Mefalopulos, & Moetsabi (2004), Beltrán (1980), Ball-Rokeach, Kim, & Matei (2001), Murray (2007) and Kim & Ball-Rokeach (2006) conceptualize communication networks in the community and the content that flows through them as three-dimensional. This means that communication professionals and researchers must be cognizant of the three-legged nature of communication networks and content flows in the community. Information and messages do not only flow to the community through top-down communication channels often controlled by authoritative sources, but should also emanate from the community after horizontal conversations and flow upwards through effective bottom-up channels.
In sum, without adequate 3-Dimensional communication systems to enable community members discuss the governance issues they deem important and transmit the results of their deliberations into the larger political and economic systems for further deliberation and action, the hopes for the empowerment, increased social capital, civic engagement and propensity for action envisaged in the solutions proposed by Andrew and Shah (2003) will not be realized. Thus, recognition of the three dimensional nature of communication is imperative for any activities that seek the empowerment of civil society as the sine qua non for achieving and institutionalizing change in the behavior of public officials and thereby moving bureaucracies of developing nations toward good governance.
Stokols (1992, 1996) further draws similarities between the systems approach and the ecologic approach. Social ecological approaches to the study of public officials’ behavior of necessity must include several concepts from the systems theory such as interdependence (physical and social aspects of environment together affect the behavior of public officials, who in turn influence the environment), hierarchy (various domains influencing behavior – family, community, religion, workplace etc. are nested within each other), homeostatis (policy measures are often goal-directed behaviors, where goals are set for individual behavior of the public officials such that the environment provides constant feedback and direction for behavior), etc. Social ecological approaches to studying social accountability issues, especially the behavior of public officials, provide a wide canvas where individual level behavioral variables can be studied in conjunction with their environmental context in what Stokols (1996) calls “a broad systems-theoretical network.”
An influential theory within the ecologic framework is the Social Ecological Theory proposed by McLeroy et al (1988).
The Social Ecological model proposed by McLeroy et al (1988), although originally developed for researching public health issues is hereby adapted for this analysis. It tackles the problem of complexity by dividing the environment into five levels presenting distinct research and action agendas for each of them. In this adapted model, changed behavior of public officials is the outcome of interest, which is in turn, determined by five classes of factors



Socio-political structure, policy, and systems (both national and global): Local,
state, federal, global policies and laws that regulate or support accountability

Community: Social networks, norms, or standards (e.g., public agenda, media agenda); community expectations of the public officials

Institutional/Organizational: Rules, regulations, policies, and informal structures (worksites, e.g. ministries, religious groups)

Interpersonal: Interpersonal processes and primary groups (family, peers, social networks, associations) that provide social identity and role definition, family/peer expectations of the public officials and issues of patron-client relationships

Individual: Individual characteristics that influence behavior such as knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and personality traits

Adapted from McLeroy KR, Bibeau D, Steckler A, Glanz K. An ecological perspective on health promotion programs. Health Educ Q 1988;15:351–377.

Social Accountability
Social Accountability: A Definition
According to Arroyo (2004), conceptually, accountability is the ability to require that public officials, private employers, and service providers answer for their policies, actions, and use of funds. Expanding the definition above, Malena et al (2004) add that social accountability is an approach, initiated by civil society or the state, towards building an accountable and responsive government by relying on civic engagement. According to Malena et al (2004), in a public sector context, social accountability refers to a broad range of actions and mechanisms that citizens, communities, independent media and civil society organizations can use to hold public officials and public servants accountable. These include, among others, participatory budgeting, public expenditure tracking, monitoring of public service delivery, investigative journalism, public commissions and citizen advisory boards. These citizen-driven accountability measures, according to Malena et al (2004), complement and reinforce conventional mechanisms of accountability such as political checks and balances, accounting and auditing systems, administrative rules and legal procedures.
Evidence suggests that social accountability mechanisms can contribute to improved governance, increased development effectiveness through better service delivery, and empowerment (Malena et al, 2004; Arroyo, 2004; OECD, 2004; Caddy et al 2007). However, ultimately, the effectiveness and sustainability of social accountability mechanisms is improved when they are “institutionalized” and when the state’s own “internal” mechanisms of accountability are rendered more transparent and open to civic engagement. Social accountability mechanisms to be effective on the long run need to be institutionalized and linked to existing governance structures and service delivery systems (Malena et al, 2004).
While the range of social accountability mechanisms is wide and diverse, key common building blocks, according to Malena et al (2004), include obtaining, analyzing and disseminating information, mobilizing public support, and advocating and negotiating change. Critical factors of success include: access to and effective use of information, civil society and state capacities and synergy between the two. The cement that binds all the key building blocks above together is an inflamed and mobilized public opinion and public will to take both individual and collective action. Public opinion is, therefore, the source of pressure (incentive) on public officials and its key ingredients are (1) publicity (2) public awareness, and (3) citizen mobilization leading to citizen action.
Conclusion
Several social accountability (SA) tools have gained widespread acceptance and application in development today, particularly as mechanisms for improving the delivery of basic services. These tools include the Citizen’s Report Card, the Community Scorecard, the Social Audit, Participatory and Transparent Monitoring, and the Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS). Without communication programs that empower, give voice and mobilize public opinion, the efforts to use the tools above to change the behavior of public officials would not be successful and sustainable.

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