SynthesisSynthesis reportreport ReviewImpact of and impact effectiveness and effectiveness of transparency ofand transparency accountability and initiativesaccountability initiatives RosemaryRosemary McGee McGee & &John John Gaventa Gaventa withwith contributions contributions from: from: GregGreg Barrett, Barrett, Richard Richard Calland, Calland, Ruth Ruth Carlitz, Carlitz, AnuradhaAnuradha Joshi Joshi and and Andrés Andrés Mejía Mejía Acosta Acosta For more information contact: Transparency & Accountability Initiative c/o Open Society Foundation 4th floor, Cambridge House 100 Cambridge Grove London, W6 0LE, UK Tel: +44 (0)20 7031 0200 www.transparency-initiative.org Copyright © 2010 Institute of Development Studies. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this report or portions thereof in any form. TAI Impacts and Effectiveness /Synthesis report 3 Contents Executive summary 5 1. Background of the project 9 2. Definitions and conceptual issues 12 3. Aims, claims, assumption and critiques 15 4. What evidence is available? 19 Service delivery initiatives 20 Budget process initiatives 22 Freedom of information 24 Natural resource governance initiatives 26 Aid Transparency 28 Summary of evidence 30 5. How do we know what we know? 33 Methodological approaches 34 Methodological choices, challenges and issues 36 6. What factors make a difference? 42 State responsiveness (supply) factors 44 Citizen voice (demand) factors 45 At the intersection: factors linking state and society accountability mechanisms 45 Beyond the simple state-society model 46 7. Gaps, insights and ways forward 47 Emerging evidence of impacts and how to attain them 48 Gaps for future work 49 References 50 Acknowledgements 55 About the authors 55 4 TAI Impacts and Effectiveness /Synthesis report Synthesis Report Review of Impact and Effectiveness of Transparency and Accountability Initiatives: Prepared for the Transparency and Accountability Initiative Workshop October 14 – 15, 2010 Rosemary McGee & John Gaventa with contributions from Greg Barrett, Richard Calland, Ruth Carlitz, Anuradha Joshi and Andrés Mejía Acosta Institute of Development Studies Background sectoral papers Annex 1: Service Delivery Annex 5: Aid Transparency Anuradha Joshi Rosemary McGee [email protected] [email protected] Annex 2: Budget Processes Abstracts of key literature Ruth Carlitz (approximately 75 key sources by sector) – forthcoming [email protected] principally prepared by Greg Barrett Annex 3: Freedom of information [email protected]/uk Richard Calland and authors above. [email protected] All documents will soon be available from Annex 4: Natural Resource Governance www.drc-citizenship.org, as well as other websites. Andrés Mejía Acosta [email protected] TAI Impacts and Effectiveness /Synthesis report 5 Executive summary Scope of study The rapidly growing field of Transparency and accountability have emerged over the transparency and accountability past decade as key ways to address both developmental initiatives (T/A Initiatives) failures and democratic deficits. In the development context, the argument is that through greater The field of transparency and accountability is alive with accountability, ‘leaky pipes’ of corruption and inefficiency rapidly emerging citizen-led and multi-stakeholder initiatives. will be repaired, aid will be channelled more effectively, While often varying enormously in scale and ambition, as and in turn development initiatives will produce greater well as in their duration and maturity, these hold in common and more visible results. For scholars and practitioners of assumptions about the relationship of transparency and democracy, a parallel argument holds that following the accountability, as well as the contributions that can be made twentieth-century wave of democratisation, democracy by non-state actors to strengthening state regulatory and now has to ‘deliver the goods’, especially in terms of material accountability capacities. outcomes, and that new forms of democratic accountability • In the area of service delivery, an array of strategies, often can help it do so. While traditional forms of state-led grouped together under the label ‘social accountability’, accountability are increasingly found to be inadequate, include complaints mechanisms, public information/ thousands of multi-stakeholder and citizen-led approaches transparency campaigns, citizen report cards and score have come to the fore, to supplement or supplant them. cards, community monitoring and social audits. Despite their rapid growth, and the growing donor • Budget transparency and accountability strategies support they receive, little attention has been paid to the include the now well-known ‘participatory budget impact and effectiveness of these new transparency and approach’, as well as public expenditure monitoring accountability initiatives. Responding to this gap, this (including, for instance, gender budgeting), participatory report, based on a review of literature and experience across auditing, the Open Budget Index, and other forms of the field with special focus on five sectors of transparency budget advocacy. and accountability work, aims to improve understanding • Many of these initiatives are underpinned by initiatives among policy-makers and practitioners of the available to secure freedom of information and transparency, evidence and identify gaps in knowledge to inform a including right to know campaigns, strengthening longer-term research agenda. Commissioned by the Policy the media, new legislative frameworks and voluntary Research Fund of the UK Department of International disclosure mechanisms. Development (DFID), this project also hopes to inform the Transparency and Accountability Initiative, a new donor • In the area of natural resources, initiatives such as the collaborative that includes the Ford Foundation, Hivos, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative and the International Budget Partnership, the Omidyar Network, the Publish What you Pay campaign among others have Open Society Institute, the Revenue Watch Institute, and the focused on making revenues from natural resources more William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. transparent, often through multi-stakeholder agreements and review. The research was carried out between May and September • Similar strategies are now being adopted in the area of aid 2010 by a team at the Institute of Development Studies in transparency, through such initiatives as the International the UK with participation of researchers in the US, South Aid Transparency Initiative, Publish What You Fund, and the Africa, Brazil and India. A general review of the literature longer-standing World Bank Inspection Panel and various was carried out, plus reviews of five priority sectors: public downward accountability mechanisms applied within service delivery; budget processes; freedom of information; large non-governmental organizations (NGOs). natural resource governance; and aid transparency. Two regional papers give further insights from literature and The aims and claims of what these initiatives can deliver experience in south Asia and Latin America. tend to be broad. They include promises of contributing to the quality of governance (including deepening democratic In this Executive Summary, we highlight the study’s overall outcomes), increasing ‘development effectiveness’, and findings. The full findings of the project are shared in an leading to greater empowerment of citizens or the accompanying synthesis report, as well as the five sectoral redressing of unequal power relations, for achieving and two regional reports mentioned. In addition, the essential human rights. project has compiled and annotated bibliography of the top 75 studies in the field. 6 TAI Impacts and Effectiveness /Synthesis report Some emerging evidence Untested assumptions and of impact, though limited unarticulated theories of change and uneven While the aims and claims of many T/A Initiatives are quite broad, the assumptions behind them are often un- Despite the growth in this field and, over a decade of articulated, untested and open to challenge. A common experience in some sectors, and despite their ambitious assumption is that greater transparency generates claims, few comprehensive, comparative or meta-level greater accountability, yet growing evidence exists that studies exist of whether desired impacts have been transparency alone is insufficient, and only leads to greater achieved and if so how. At the same time, there are a accountability in interaction with other factors. Another number of micro level studies, especially in the service common assumption is that making information available delivery and budget transparency fields. These begin will stimulate action on the part of a broad range of to suggest that in some conditions, the initiatives can stakeholders, when in fact little may be known about the contribute to a range of positive outcomes including, incentives and constraints of collective action to use this for instance, information. And finally, many assumptions often assume • increased state or institutional responsiveness homogeneous or monolithic categories of actors, such • lowering of corruption as ‘states’, ‘citizens’, ‘media’, ‘civil society’, without looking at critical differences of position, power, behaviors and • building new democratic spaces for citizen engagement incentives within them. • empowering local voices In addition to untested assumptions, very few initiatives •