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Democratic accountability and service delivery Andrés Mejía Acosta with Anuradha Joshi and Graeme Ramshaw* Introduction A key premise – and promise – of the democratic contract is that citizens can hold government officials accountable for the provision of public goods and services. The fundamental assumption is that more effective accountability mechanisms will encourage improved service provision through faster, higher quality or betterimplemented responses to the claims of citizens. In principle, a democratic regime can provide citizens with the necessary mechanisms to hold governments accountable. However, the concept of accountability remains one of the most contested in the social sciences. In this article we discuss the different approaches identified in the existing literature, including social and political accountability approaches, and outline four ideal dimensions to evaluating Box 1: International IDEA Commonwealth Governance 54 Handbook 2013/14 the effectiveness of accountability relations from a democratic perspective: • Standards • Answerability • Responsiveness • Enforceability In each of these dimensions, we are interested in identifying the main agents of accountability, their incentives to be accountable, the existence of formal and informal provisions to enable accountability, and the presence of sanctions to enforce accountability. The empirical part of our review examined 16 case studies in which citizens or politicians have held government officials accountable for the delivery of public services. The scope of democratic accountability The basic notion of accountability entails a relationship between at least two types of actor, one of which (a principal) delegates to another (an agent) the responsibility to act on his behalf. This act of delegation usually entails some kind of correspondence by which it is implied that the agent is accountable for his actions to the principal (Kiewiet and McCubbins, 1991). In many cases, an official who receives a request from a citizen is expected to offer a response, but is not legally required to do so. These would be examples where there is direct answerability, but could not be construed as cases of accountability proper unless the citizen exerts some kind of sanction – such as deciding not to vote for this parliamentary representative at the next election, for example. To be clear, a stricter notion of political accountability refers to ‘relationships that formally give some actor the authority of oversight and/or sanction relative to public officials’ (Mainwaring, 2003: 7). While useful for some purposes, this minimalist definition drawn from political science leaves out many social interactions that are and can be commonly construed as ‘relationships of accountability’. International IDEA’s Democracy and Development programme has set out to explore, explain and document the linkages between democratic accountability in service delivery. The work builds on the conviction that democratic practices offer the most relevant and effective way to promote development outcomes in an inclusive, equal and effective way. Accountable democracies provide a two-way channel to connect citizens’ preferences with elected officials. On the one hand, democratic mechanisms offer citizens the legal means and guarantees so they can voice their policy concerns to their elected representatives. On the other hand, democratic mechanisms enable citizens to hold government officials accountable for the provision of public services in a responsible and transparent manner. Thus, the notion of democratic accountability refers to both the citizens’ ability to articulate their policy demands and the responsibility of government officials to respond to those preferences. Source: http://www.idea.int/development/democraticservice. cfm * This article draws on a desk review commissioned by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (January 2013). International IDEA publications are independent of specific national or political interests. Views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of International IDEA, its board or its council members.


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