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Highlights on Social Accountability

April 23 - May 1, 2013

[Upcoming Event]

"Social Accountability: How Context Matters" Thursday, May 9, 2013; 9:00 - 11:30 AM (EST), Room J B1-075, Washington DC The purpose of this session is to discuss a recently completed piece of analytical work (ESW) on context and social accountability for the SDV Social Accountability and Demand-for-Good Governance Cluster. The topic will be presented by Simon O'Meally (Governance Specialist, SASGP), who was the author of this ESW. This work is a background input for the cluster flagship report. The main objective of the ESW was to: develop a preliminary framework for better understanding, mapping, and tailoring to context in the design and implementation of demand-side governance. It addresses two core questions: (i)What do we know about the critical contextual factors that matter? and (ii) What are the practical implications? For any questions regarding this event, or to RSVP, please send an email to fabiansoria@worldbank.org. You can also watch the event live online here: http://worldbankva.adobeconnect.com/sa-may9-event/
[Upcoming Event]

Open Government Partnership Networking Mechanism Webinar on Assets Disclosure Tuesday, May 21, 2013, 10:00 - 11:00 AM EST Financial Disclosure refers to the legislation and the corresponding system put in place for public officials to periodically submit information on their assets, income, business activities, interests, etc. Very few mechanisms combine both the prevention and detection sides of corruption; this is why financial disclosure is increasingly standing out and getting closer attention. Over the years, the World Bank Financial Market Integrity (FMI) Unit has compiled and analyzed information on financial disclosures systems in 176 countries. Using FMI s experience in this area, this webinar will present global and regional trends on the main components of disclosure systems, good practices, and discuss the main issues to take into consideration when implementing or reforming a financial disclosure system. This webinar will also feature Mr. Irakli Kotetishvili, Director of the Civil Service Bureau of Georgia. Mr. Kotetishvili will present on Georgias Asset Declaration system and share experiences on the challenges and lessons learned with the management of this transparency and accountability mechanism. To read more information about the webinar and to sign up, please click here.
[New Document]

"How-To-Note on Monitoring by Non-State Actors" Social Development Department (SDV) and the Operational Policies and Country Services (OPCS) are pleased to announce the release of the How-to-Note: Participatory and Third Party Monitoring in World BankFinanced Projects: What Can Non-state Actors (NSAs) Do?. This note offers a process-oriented, step-by-step guide to designing and implementing monitoring by non-state actors in Bank-financed projects. It provides guidance on: (i) identifying project needs that would benefit from monitoring by non-State Actors (NSAs); (ii) assessing the country and local context; (iii) selecting the monitoring methodology or approach that fits the context; (iv) 1

designing the implementation modalities for non-state monitoring (NSM); (v) implementing monitoring by NSAs; (vi) monitoring and assessing the effectiveness; and (vii) institutionalizing, scaling up, and sustaining NSM. To read this note, please click here.
[New Document]

"Mapping Context for Social Accountability - A Resource Paper" This resource paper, written by Simon O'Meally (Governance Specialist, SASGP) focuses on the issue of Social Accountability and context, arising out of a growing recognition that context is critical in shaping, making, and breaking Social Accountability interventions. Prepared as a background piece to SDV's upcoming Social Accountability Flagship report, it seeks to respond to the increasing realization that: (i) there are significant challenges associated with transplanting a successful Social Accountability model from one context to another, and a tools-based approach to Social Accountability risks obscuring the underlying social and political processes that really explain why a given model is, or is not, effective; (ii) there has been a tendency to be overly optimistic about the potential of demand-side governance approaches to solve difficult and contextspecific development problems; and, (iii) various cases of donor-supported Social Accountability (with exceptions) do not appear to be adequately grounded in the growing evidence of how Social Accountability has actually played out on the ground. To read and download this document, please click here.
[New Document]

"The Contextual Factors That Shape Social Accountability" This document was written by Badru Bukenya and Sophie King, from the University of Manchester, UK. Commissioned by the World Banks Social Accountability and Demand for Good Governance Team, this annotated bibliography explores first political economic, and then empirical case study literature, to attempt to draw out critical contextual and approach-based factors and the interrelationships between them, which shape the effectiveness of social accountability initiatives. To download this document, please click here.
[New Document]

"Understanding the Role of Context in Shaping Social Accountability Interventions: Towards an EvidenceBased Approach" This document was written by Badru Bukenya, Sam Hickey and Sophie King, from the University of Manchester, UK. This report systematically reviews what over 90 studies of Social Accountability (with a particular focus on transparency, contentious action and participatory governance interventions), found regarding the influence of context. This document was commissioned by the World Banks Social Accountability and Demand for Good Governance Team. To download the document, please click here.
[WB Blog]

"Is It Time for a New Paradigm for "Citizen Engagement"? The Role of Context and What the Evidence Tells Us" This blog post is a contribution of Simon O'Meally (Governance Specialist, SASGP) to the People, Spaces, Deliberation blog at the World Bank. In this post, the author talks about how almost all development agencies promote some form of citizen engagement and accountability. However, he argues, the challenge now is how to implement this citizen engagement in different countries and contexts. The blog then provides six domains (Domani 1: Civil Society, Domain 2: Political Society, Domain 3: Inter-Elite Relations the Political Settlement, Domain 4: State-Society Relations, Domain 5: Intra-Society Relations, Domain 6: Global Dimensions) and explains why context matters. To read the full blog post, please click here.
[Document]

"Are Good Citizens Good Participants? Testing Citizenship Norms and Political Participation Across 25 Nations" Can good citizenship be equated to a participative citizen? Are they synonyms? This research, by Catherine Bolzendahl and Hilde Coff was recently published in Political Studies. In the document, the authors present a cross-national study to explain political participation. The authors examine the normative beliefs about the 2

importance of various measures of good citizenship, and their relationship to three modes of political engagement (activism, party membership and voting). One of the findings is that assigning higher importance to paying taxes/obeying the law is negatively linked to all forms of participation, whereas the opposite is true for norms about the importance of voting and being active in associations. To download the full document, please click here.
[Blog]

"Why Good Governance Should be Included in the Post-2015 Agenda" This blog post is published in the Devex Blog, written by Jenny Lei Ravelo (Staff Writer at Devex, Philippines). In this blog post, the author argues that even though governance wasn't included in the Millennium Development Goals when the UN established them in 2000, there are very good reasons to include governance in the post2015 agenda for development. To read more about this topic, please click here.

The SA&DFGG team would like to thank Tiago Peixoto (WBIOG), Marcos Mendiburu (WBISG) for their contribution to this Weekly Highlights. Please send us any information you would like us to share through the weekly highlights of the Social Accountability Community of Practice! All inputs are appreciated and recognition will be given in this section.
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