Making accountability count

Accountability is fundamentally a relationship of power. When accountability mechanisms work, citizens are able to make demands on powerful institutions and ensure that those demands are met. Accountability is therefore about democracy, rights and citizenship.

Good governance, which is primarily concerned with building effective states, has tended to appropriate the idea of accountability to mean a legal relationship, without acknowledging the social relationships that underpin it. This does not match with the politics and practices of accountability as poor people experience it.

The Citizenship DRC's research looks at different strategies citizens use to demand accountability and asks: accountability for what and for whom? It focuses on demands for accountability around access to resources by people in deprived communities in India, Bangladesh, Kenya, Nigeria and Mexico.

The challenges of demanding accountability differ according to whether the struggle is for rights to resources, to environmental protection or to welfare (health and housing). How central a resource is to a country's economy or how important the country is in the global market place can have a bearing on which accountability mechanism can be used and who can use it.

Conflict and negotiation

A common feature across the countries studied is the cycle of conflict and negotiation that emerges in struggles for accountability. Which accountability strategies work, when, why and for whom?

In Nigeria, communities made short-term demands to oil companies for concessions and saw increased flows of capital into a village. But oil companies reinforced and made worse internal divisions within communities by giving financial help to elite groups. This increased the conflict, rather than addressing the fundamental rights violations in the Niger Delta. Short term concessions therefore can be a poor substitute for longer term political reforms.

Combined strategies

The research focuses on formal and informal strategies for accountability such as taking legal action, street protests and using the media. It explores the potential for positive outcomes for poor people when strategies are combined.

In Mombasa, Kenya, council tenants demanded decent housing conditions, secure tenure, functioning urban services and an end to the grabbing of public land. Formally, they drew on the United Nations Convention on Human Rights. Informally, they mobilised residents, blocked illegal construction and gained media attention. With this combined strategy they managed to prevent well-connected business interests from further encroaching upon their land. However, over ten years of struggle, policy at local or national level did not change. Neither did it bring about concrete changes in the practices and procedures of the Housing Development Department in Kenya.

Lessons from the research:

• Technocratic understandings and definitions of accountability overlook power inequalities and reduce the likelihood of challenging decisions that affect poor people adversely.
• Accountability works best when it is claimed by citizens and is for a broader social or economic good.
• Legal provisions and legally protected rights are important but their reach is limited: law can bring about changes in society but equally social changes can transform law too.
• Promoting accountability is political: reforms in accountability challenge powerful interests that often benefit from not being transparent or responding to citizens' claims for their rights.

Peter Newell and Joanna Wheeler

Peter Newell
Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK
T +44 (0)2476 524131
F +44 (0)2476 572548
P.J.Newell@warwick.ac.uk

Joanna Wheeler
Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9RE, UK
T +44 (0)1273 678646
F +44 (0)1273 621202
J.Wheeler@ids.ac.uk

See also

Rights, Resources and the Politics of Accountability, Zed Books: London, edited by Peter Newell and Joanna Wheeler, 2006 (PDF) Link

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