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The World Bank Legal Review
Voice and Accountability in Practice The role of voice and accountability in effective service delivery has increased in the international development discourse. Accountability and voice, which includes access to information and the right to participation, are critical aspects of effective service delivery.22 Increasingly, accountability is regarded as an instrument not only for adherence to procedures but also for delivery of outcomes.23 Accountability provided by a mechanism such as the Inspection Panel has improved the way that the Bank conducts its operations because the compliance investigation promotes respect of obligations contained in the policies, and it plays a key role in clarifying the application of these policies, leading to improved and more sustainable outcomes. In giving voice and exercising the accountability function, the Panel is an internal governance tool that enhances institutional development effectiveness.24 The sections below illustrate these points in practice, with examples of actual cases. One section shows how the Panel process provides an opportunity for project-affected people and communities to voice their concerns and engage in a dialogue with Bank Management at several stages of the process. The section on the impacts of the Panel’s accountability function presents specific findings that brought clarity to some aspects of the operational policy framework of the Bank.
Voice One of the most important characteristics of the Inspection Panel is that it provides a forum for community-led, “bo om-up,” accountability. Its creation opened a direct channel of communication between affected people and the World Bank’s highest level of decision making, the Board of Executive Directors. The findings of Panel investigations are made public and become available to a wide set of stakeholders, producing a “sunshine effect” and pu ing a public spotlight on people’s problems and the Bank’s reactions.25 22
See Samuel Paul, Does Voice Ma er? For Public Accountability, Yes 9 (Policy Res. Working Paper No. 1388, World Bank 1994). Paul argues that service outcomes are created through actions taken by providers who have the resources and skills to carry them out and that the public has no direct means to improve service outcomes. Therefore, he assumes that enhanced accountability is the mediating variable that induces providers to generate improved outcomes. This implies that an increase in provider responsiveness and compliance, and the reinforcement of these behaviors through changed agency structures, monitoring, and incentives, are conditions required for service outcomes to improve.
23
Anne Marie Goe & Rob Jenkins, Voice and Accountability in Service Delivery 3 (Birkbeck College, U. London 2004).
24
Suresh Nanwani, Accountability Mechanism of Multilateral Development Banks: Power Complications Enhancement, in Law in the Pursuit of Development 115 (Amanda Perry-Kessaris ed., Routledge-Cavendish 2009). He speaks of “empowerment through access.” See also Shihata, supra note 1, at v, where World Bank President Louis Preston states that the “Panel is part of the Bank’s evolving policy of improving its effectiveness, strengthening accountability and increasing openness.”
25
Edith Brown Weiss & Harold K. Jacobson, Engaging Countries: Strengthening Compliance with International Environmental Accords (MIT Press 2000).