Balancing the Scales: Citizen-Centered Approaches in Enhancing Public Accountability

Malick B¹*

1. The World Bank, New Delhi, India

The proposed paper will present an analysis of key institutional innovations aimed to amplify citizen voice and client power in the Indian urban infrastructure sector. Using an institutional framework of service delivery offered by the World Development Report 2004, the paper will critically examine ten case studies documenting recent experiences in the establishment of institutionalized structures and mechanisms to promote accountability in service delivery. The individual case studies, which have been commissioned by the Water and Sanitation Program –South Asia, cover a range of innovations across different functions, sectors, institutional types and environments. These include schemes for user contributions in infrastructure development costs, e-governance tools for efficient customer-provider interfaces, approaches in participatory governance, private sector participation as well as legal and regulatory channels of voice and redress.

The paper will focus on three critical issues. First, it will examine the relationship between initiatives in voice (representation in policymaking with politicians and bureaucrats) and client power (relationships in which clients can monitor and discipline service providers) on one hand, and larger reform processes on the other. It appears that citizen-focused initiatives have not been able to trigger structural reform of the compact (incentives provided by policymakers for providers to serve clients) but have filled spaces generated by supply-side reform processes, which they have in turn strengthened and reinforced. This complex interplay between dynamics of accountability-focused reforms and broader institutional restructuring is likely to provide useful information to practitioners.

Second, the paper will evaluate the success of these initiatives in terms of their ability to reduce transaction costs faced by different stakeholders, and their impact on overall efficiency of service provision. In particular, the paper will explore strategies to manage and align political incentives with the objectives of reform. In the Indian context, this issue appears to be fundamentally linked to the decentralization process and specific relationships between multiple tiers of government.

Finally, the paper will seek to provide some empirical evidence on the fundamental question of whether makings services work for “all” adequately translates to making services work for the poor. Evidence suggests that there exist specific legal, financial, technical and institutional constraints that need to be addressed in order for benefits of reform to reach the poor. The paper will determine the extent to which these issues have been addressed by broader accountability initiatives and offer strategies to ensure that the needs of urban poor populations are integrated into reform programs in an effective and sustainable manner.
The paper targets governments, service provider / utilities and donor agencies to advocate greater citizen and consumer focus in policy and institutional reform agendas.