Unlocking Evidence on Effective Civil Society programs: What, Where and How

What? Encouraging the growth of local social capital and capacity for collective action key to effective participatory planning activities

The systematic review “Does incorporating participation and accountability improve development outcomes? Meta-analysis and framework synthesis” identified nine participatory priority setting, planning or budgeting interventions where citizens participated in setting the priorities for or planning of local services. These included support for participatory budgeting in municipal governments in Brazil, Mexico and Russia, and support for participatory planning in India, Pakistan, Guinea and Kenya. It also included requirements for inclusive participation in two fragile contexts, Afghanistan and DRC. The review suggested three factors that improved the likelihood of achieving results: 

• Strong local buy-in from front-line service providers for the intervention; 
• Incorporating specific, culturally appropriate measures that address local barriers to the participation of vulnerable groups; and 
• Interventions designed to spur the growth of local civil society and capacity for collective action.

Where? Civil Society accountability activities more effective when focused on front line providers 

The systematic review “Does incorporating participation and accountability improve development outcomes? Meta-analysis and framework synthesis” identified 10 evaluations of accountability interventions, which specifically comprised citizen feedback or monitoring mechanism interventions. These activities solicited feedback related to citizens in the monitoring of service delivery, to hold public service providers and institutions responsible for executing their powers and mandates according to appropriate standards. These included community report cards in infrastructure (Afghanistan, Indonesia and Colombia), health (Ghana, Malawi and Uganda), agriculture (Uganda) and the security sector (DRC), and individual citizen ‘feedback loops’ in Guinea, Kenya and Uganda. The review suggests that citizen feedback and monitoring interventions were more successful at achieving results where some or all of the following factors were present:

• Interventions targeted a service that citizens accessed through interactions with front-line providers; 
• A phased, facilitated approach jointly engaged citizens and service providers in monitoring performance benchmarks; 
• Creation of common knowledge of feedback or monitoring results; and 
• Working through local community organizations to strengthen community members’ voices

How? Phased, facilitated collaboration key to service delivery approaches with civil society

A systematic review of citizen engagement in public services in low- and middle-income countries focused on participation, inclusion, transparency and accountability (PITA) initiatives shows that a collaborative rather than confrontational approach with the service providers whose services are under scrutiny is more likely to be effective. Engaging communities may require using civil society organizations to facilitate the community's participation. Activity design should ensure positive engagement with supply-side actors within the intervention setting. 

The systematic review findings demonstrated that citizen engagement interventions were most effective when:

• Approaches to citizen-service provider engagement appear to work more effectively when implemented through phased, facilitated collaborative processes rather than one-off accountability meetings that are seen as confrontational.
• Improving intermediate user engagement outcomes, for example, meeting attendance and contributions to community funds and improving access to and quality of services but not service use outcomes. 
• Interventions can lead to improvements in some wellbeing outcomes such as health and productive outcomes and may improve tax collection but do not usually lead to changes in provider action outcomes such as public spending, staff motivation and corruption. Exceptions might exist where there is direct interaction between citizens and service providers in the regular delivery of services. 
• Interventions providing performance information do not generally improve access or lead to improvements in service quality.

Do you have a study we should share for a future Facty Friday? Send an email to drg.el@usaid.gov!