434 Accountability through Public Opinion
Feedback from Participants’ Response Cards Q: What lessons have you learned about how to overcome structural challenges/obstacles in the political context when introducing social accountability mechanisms? Need to locate SA tools within local sensitivities and sensibilities; need to locate political incentives to transcend the technical nature of SA tools. Capacity building to create political negotiation for a win-win solution. Awareness building is essential before embarking on any accountability exercise (report cards, etc.); need to bring the government in; need to identify political incentives to build support of elites. RTI (example of India and Mexico) is an SA mechanism, but needs to be accompanied by political context in which information is not only accessible but can be appropriated into a broad context and to know public opinion and public demand. This requires the complementary right to freedom of opinion and expression and a plural media environment. The citizen report card may not be very distinguishable from a technocratic answer survey unless it is linked to social mobilization around a particular concern or issue. Would the CRC be more effective in the context of a specific service or campaign rather than covering a broad set of services? Access to information is key to generating genuine demand with SA mechanisms. Evaluation of the political context in order to implement social accountability; donors need to think long-term; context does matter. RTI was successful because of the rights-based approach. Better than access to information—RTI gives more legal mechanisms than access to information. Conditions/features of the political context should be taken into consideration in adopting the social accountability mechanisms that are used in the context/country; the CRC as a diagnostic tool—very good process; political contexts are varied—no blueprint approach to approaching social accountability. Need to fully understand the complexity of local political context; need for variable approaches, and more importantly defining success in a way that’s appropriate to the context. One theme that jumps out is personal/citizen motivation; sometimes anger over injustice isn’t the same as motivation to engage productively in accountability. What are multiple sources of motivation (to show up, speak out, etc.) and multiple ways of engaging them?