Moving From New Knowledge to New Practice*
For about ten years now, my team and I have been working on strengthening the accountability of public services for rural indigenous populations in Guatemala. During this time, we certainly have seen an evolution in the theory and practice of accountability. We started with an aim to strengthen the democratic governance of public polices and services in a post conflict context with historical inequity and social exclusion. To us, it was clear we were aiming at a relatively long process of engagement. The emerging frameworks and tools on social accountability and legal empowerment were useful to understand how to implement, monitor, and evaluate our interventions, which included improving working relationships among rural indigenous citizens, authorities, and public service providers and improving access to public services.
In addition to the increased interest from donors in accountability, we also witnessed a mushrooming of “social accountability projects,” which technocratic interventions were attempting to solve highly complex citizen-state interactions through two- or three-year projects. Fortunately, it seems these types of projects are much less frequent now.
In terms of the theoretical advance, in the past couple years we have seen the research by scholars who take an explicit approach to the politics of accountability, including power relations (Fox, Tembo, Joshi and Halloran). For us, practitioners working in post conflict contexts with high levels of impunity, this theoretical advance speaks better to our experience than the technocratic view that dominated the past decade.
Despite the theoretical advance described above, we have yet to move forward on our operational tools and implementing frameworks. For instance, although many donors and large international NGOs recognize the complexity of accountability and the politics involved with it, they still work through self-contained projects and logframes. Projects would not be a problem per se if they were cycles in a broader agenda rooted in a strategic framework. But usually they are not.
I would highlight three current challenges and opportunities.
Going From Knowledge to Practice
In my organization, we follow the principles of action research, which hold that learning occurs when one changes his or her own practice. I would say that we have accumulated very important knowledge in the accountability field but are only just starting to learn (demonstrating changed practices).
Building a Genuine Collaboration between Researchers and Practitioners
Most of the research in the field has consisted of top-down initiatives by donors and academic researchers. There are very few examples in which a research agenda has been developed and implemented with the active collaboration of practitioners. In 2015, I participated in two international meetings in which this situation was broadly recognized and there was a true interest in developing effective collaboration. To make this intention a reality, donors can help by supporting a continuous engagement between researchers and practitioners (going beyond one single meeting) and even supporting the development of a strategic research agenda that would be developed by interested researchers and practitioners together.
Connecting the Accountability Field with the SDGs Movement
There is an interest in the SDGs community to implement citizen participation as a way to ensure national and subnational accountability. However, many calls from within that field are referring to “citizen voice” as the key driver. The past decade of research and knowledge from the accountability field has shown us that citizen voice is not sufficient to affect the behavior and decision making of those in power. This means that the accountability field has much to contribute to the SDGs movement. I see a unique opportunity to build collaboration between both fields. T/AI could develop a specific stream of work to support those researchers and practitioners who are building in-country and international collaboration about SDGs accountability, including citizen-led accountability.
Conclusion
I feel strongly that there is a need to continue advancing the theoretical work, frameworks, and tools related to the politics of accountability. At the core of citizens’ demands for transparency and accountability lies the need to build and strengthen democratic institutions. These efforts are for the medium and long term. It would be good therefore to have explicit goals in this regard and the framing of an action plan.
- This short essay is part of the process, to assess the achievements and opportunities for the Transparency and Accountability Initiative (T/AI) several academics, researchers and activists, were invited to produce short essays responding the question: “Based on your understanding of how the field of transparency and accountability has evolved in recent years, what issues or areas of work would be especially important and fruitful for T/AI’s funders to address in the next several years?” Walter Flores was one of those invited to give opinion.
The link to the complete set of short essays is: http://ceip.org/1UsUe7r