Many citizens are disillusioned with government and democracy. Corruption, state failures to respond to poor people’s needs and a lack of connection between citizens and elected representatives and bureaucrats are major concerns. At the same time, citizens are challenging corporations and global institutions to be more responsible.

Accountability is now a key issue in development. Greater accountability from governments, donors and other institutions is expected to allow aid to reach the people for whom it is intended. Donors have been mostly interested in supporting the ability of states to provide basic services – primary health, education, water, sanitation, roads and bridges.

The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness aims to channel donor funding directly to governments through general budget support, encouraging partner countries to exercise leadership and coordination over their own development strategies and policies. While this is important, donors give little consideration to the role of citizens in building the state and a more inclusive democracy.

Accountability, rather than being a bureaucratic or legal term, is about improving democratic processes, challenging power and claiming citizenship. It is best claimed from below by citizens themselves, rather than only being provided by the state. Supporting citizen-led initiatives is important as they address accountability failures in very direct ways.

A focus on active and empowered citizens who can participate in decision-making, claim rights and hold institutions accountable is at the centre of the work of the Development Research Centre on Citizenship, Participation and Accountability (Citizenship DRC). This issue of id21 focus presents articles and case-studies based on the DRC’s key research themes

The Citizenship DRC’s work shows important connections and relationships between effective states and empowered citizens. The programme asks:

• What are the roles of citizens and civil society in building effective states and more inclusive democracy?
• Where can ordinary people have a voice and try to influence important decisions and policies that affect their lives?
• How can people hold governments or corporations accountable?
• How can these institutions become more responsive to the needs of poor people? 

Researchers in this programme use the term citizenship in several ways, depending on the countries and context they are studying and on diverse theoretical perspectives. However, the fundamental approach - ‘seeing like a citizen’ - starts with the perceptions of citizens themselves and asks how they interact and view the institutions from which they are expected to benefit.

People’s understanding and action

Although personal experiences vary by country and context, many people share common values and ideas of citizenship. In some places, people see themselves as citizens in relation to their local community or neighbourhood, rather than a state that may fail to provide services or include them in decision-making. This is a challenge in trying to build effective states with ‘empowered’ citizens. This could, however, also help in assessing efforts towards building states. For example, when poor citizens start to identify the state in their idea of citizenship, they may have begun to see the state as a potentially reliable and fair provider of rights and services.

Citizens who are active and empowered emerge gradually through local-level action around livelihoods, access to services and so on. Later (sometimes a generation later), people may gain the independence and knowledge to interact with state level processes. This implies that decades of support to ‘participation’ and to forms of local action, are likely to have had a positive, long-term, state building function. This is especially true if projects also provide opportunities for people to learn about their rights and gain skills that enable them to claim their rights.

Citizens interact with the state through a variety of means in addition to voting for or lobbying elected representatives. State-initiated forums, such as health councils in Brazil, can have the potential for citizens to get involved in debates about public policy from local to national level. Other means through which citizens and states interact include non-government organisations and local associations, such as garment workers in Bangladesh and self-organised social movements, such as HIV and AIDS activists in South Africa.

Building inclusive citizenship and democracy is a long term effort requiring sustained commitment and support over years if not decades. The main conclusions from the Citizenship DRC’s research include:

• People claim citizenship and rights through their own actions. Better-informed people who understand their rights and claim them through collective action and political processes make an important contribution to building effective states.
• Citizens, especially poor people, need support to develop their understanding of citizenship in relation to the state and other institutions and to gain skills to participate and claim rights.
• Improving accountability means the state needs to increase its capacity to respond to the claims of citizens. Citizen participation in local development and service delivery results not only in better services, but can also serve as a learning ground for new forms of cooperation between state officials, politicians and citizens.

Source(s):
Taking a Citizen’s Perspective: Building Effective States, by Rosalind Eyben and Sarah Ladbury, 2006 (PDF) Full document.
Triumph, Deficit or Contestation? Deepening the ‘Deepening Democracy’ Debate, IDS Working Paper 264, IDS, by John Gaventa, 2006 (PDF) Full document.
Further details about this research project ‘Development Research Centre on Citizenship, Participation and Accountability’ Full document.

Funded by: UK Department of International Development

id21 Research Highlight: 30 July 2007

Further Information:
Alison Dunn and John Gaventa
Institute of Development Studies
University of Sussex
Brighton, BN1 9RE
UK

Tel: +44 (0)1273 678646
Fax: +44 (0)1273 621202
Contact the contributor: A.Dunn@ids.ac.uk; J.Gaventa@ids.ac.uk

Development Research Centre on Citizenship, Participation and Accountability

Institute of Development Studies, UK

Other related links:
'Values and meanings of citizenship'

'Case study: Theatre helps explore citizenship'

'Spaces for change?'

'Case study: Giving people a space in Brazil's health councils'

'Making accountability count'

'Case study: Making the Bangladeshi garment industry accountable'

'Citizens and science - whose knowledge counts?'