How can citizens collaborate and engage with accountability institutions to improve government performance and access to fundamental rights? GPSA Webinar March 10, 2015 Enrique Peruzzotti Professor, University Torcuato Di Tella Researcher, CONICET
The changing meanings of accountability: from a conventional to a social accountability approach 1. Conventional conceptual framework of accountability as limited to government which largely reduced the field of accountability studies to the analysis of the workings of intra-state mechanisms of oversight (or what O'Donnell termed 'horizontal accountability'). Horizontal forms of accountability along with elections, and to a lesser extent the politics of influence in the public sphere exhausted the catalogue of accountability options. 2. Such framework soon proved inadequate to make sense of a variety of accountability initiatives that defied the conceptual categories at hand. First, because of the emergence of accountability initiatives that were neither carried out by horizontal agencies nor by political parties but involved a wide spectrum of civil society groups. Those initiatives did not limit themselves to the activation of conventional accountability mechanisms but they promoted the creation of new ones as well. 3. Social accountability practices have become an established feature of democratic accountability. From a democratic conception of the term, they are not merely a complement but the essence of democratic practices
The conventional approach: limited repertoire of accountability mechanisms Horizontal mechanisms (political and legal accountability) Public Prosecutor Supreme Audit Institutions Legislative Executive Judiciary Elections Public Sphere Individual Citizens I Civil Society Media Vertical Mechanisms
Recent developments have resulted in the creation of new agencies & mechanisms of accountability as well as on the incorporation of social accountability politics as a central component of any accountability agenda. Anticorruption agencies Supply Side Creation of new agencies & mechanisms Ombudsman Human Rights Commissions Social policy councils Participatory planning New constitutional mechanisms for rights protection Citizen complaint mechanisms Demand side Social accountability politics Social watchdogs organizations (budgets, public works, corruption, human rights, environmental policies, etc.) Watchdog and investigative journalism (media exposes of governmental wrongdoing) Victim s movements of illegal encroachments by the state Public interest litigation and lobbying Right to information movements Articulated oversight
Civic mechanisms to enhance governmental accountability STATE HYBRID CIVIL SOCIETY INDIVIDUAL CITIZEN LEGAL ACCOUNTABILITY Horizontal Accountability Balance and appointed agencies Articulated oversight Vertical nonelectoral Social oversight POLITICAL ACCOUNTABILITY Horizontal Accountability Balance agencies Vertical electoral Institutionalized participation Policy Councils with decision-making prerogatives Vertical nonelectoral Mobilizing Public Opinion Public interest lobbying in the legislative Vertical electoral Voting Use of courts to access services/ challenge policies
Spectrum of societalization of horizontal accountability institutions: The case of Supreme Audit Institutions - Citizen Engagement Opening channels of information/communication (pro-active communication of the information generated by SAIs + creation of mechanisms to receive and process citizen s complaints) Ex.: complaint hotline (Korea); Citizen audit request (Korea); Citizen complaint office (CGR Colombia) Participation of civil society in the process of selection/appointment of comptrollers and auditors Ex.: Council for Citizen Participation and Social Accountability has veto power over the appointment of the General Comptroller (Ecuador) Participation of civil society in audit planning Ex.: AGN participatory planning (Argentina) Articulated oversight Ex.: ACUMAR/Matanza Riachuelo basin (Argentina)
New developments in democratic accountability: civil society / SAI relations SAIs Legislative Executive Judiciary Citizen Complaint Systems / Pro-active Communication Participation of civil society in the process of selection/appointm ent of comptrollers and auditors Participation of civil society in audit planning ARTICULATED OVERSIGHT - Degree of Societalization of SAI + Individual Citizens I Civil Society
Articulated oversight: combining social and horizontal mechanisms Articulated oversight = not simply to improve processes of communication with citizens and civil society but fully incorporate social actors in the oversight practice. In this modality, civil society no longer acts as an external sensor but it is an integral part of a network of oversight actors that productively combines the respective resources of horizontal and social accountability mechanisms It results in a more effective form of oversight than the one that might result from the unilateral working of either horizontal or social mechanisms for it combines a wider repertoire of resources and inputs than no mechanism operating alone could possibly generate on its own There are different modalities of articulated oversight that range from the joint initiative of a SAI and a single civil society organization to more complex ones that combine resources from a variety of horizontal agencies and different sort of civil society actors.
Articulated oversight I: Articulated oversight regarding the accessibility of the public transportation system in Buenos Aires city to handicapped citizens By law, a certain proportion of the buses that are part of the system of public transport of the city of BA must be equipped to transport citizens in a wheel chair An advocacy NGOs approached the Office of the Auditor General, complaining that the bus companies were not respecting the above legislation The Auditor General conducted a paper review to determine if the companies had the stipulated proportions of specially equipped buses and if they were in active service. The report determined that there were no violations to the legislation and that almost 70% of the units were in compliance with the law. The advocacy NGOs challenged the findings of the report and offered their services to conduct an on site audit with the SAI to determine to what extent the findings of the formal audit could be empirically corroborated. After an on site auditing by a mixed team of public officials and NGO volunteers, it was determined that while the formal findings of the report were correct, companies were employing the special units only in a very narrow scope of time (usually in the late night /early morning schedule), preventing access to them in the times that were most required by handicapped citizens.
Articulated oversight II: ACUMAR/Riachuelo-Matanza Basin 64 km long river Riachuelo/Matanza river basin runs through a densely populated metropolitan area (comprising fifteen different municipalities) 5 million inhabitants + around 5000 industries Overlapping jurisdictions (national, provincial, municipal, local levels), conflicting regulatory schemes Social accountability initiatives promoted by grassroots organizations (usually local neighborhood associations) + domestic environmental NGOs + INGOs directed at the Ombudsman Office and the courts. Ombudsman Office articulated a broad coalition of state officials and civil society actors that wrote a very critical report denouncing governmental inaction and making recommendations Basin s residents, MDs from the local public hospital filed a lawsuit before the Supreme Court of Justice against the federal government, the government of the province of BA, the city of BA, and 44 local industries for damages to health caused by environmental pollution. The Supreme Court admitted a class action for collective damages and demanded from the authorities a clean up plan. Creation of ACUMAR (Basin authority) responsible for implementing the clean-up plan The Supreme Court ordered ACUMAR to not only address the pollution in the river but to improve the quality of life of the residents of the basin and established a mixed system of oversight that included different horizontal agencies as well as a variety of civil society organizations.
Articulated oversight II: ACUMAR/Riachuelo-Matanza Basin The Ombudsman Office is the coordinating agent in charge of organizing the mixed oversight network. The National Auditor is responsible for overseeing the budgetary implementation of the plan. There is a SC appointed federal judge to follow up the case. Civil Society organizations role is to help in the monitoring activities to ensure compliance of all actors/initiatives with the obligations set out in the court sentence as well as to make recommendations to ACUMAR. Complex scenario to monitor with multiple yet interrelated goals: Relocation/adaptation of industries to environmental viable standards Relocation of population/urban renewal Building of basic urban infrastructure (sewage systems, waste treatment plants, roads, housing, etc.) Environmental clean-up
Articulated oversight II: ACUMAR/Riachuelo-Matanza Basin Given its complexity, the case demands a wide variety of inputs that could not be solely provided by a single actor/institution but requires the coordination of different sort of resources and know-how. Day to day knowledge of what goes on in the locality (grassroots organizations) Technical expertise to challenge the reports of ACUMAR (universities, specialized NGOs), to audit the budget (SAI) Legal know-how on how to best advance the rights of the residents in the courts A purely social accountability strategy could not have been as effective: by becoming integrated into a network that included horizontal agencies with sanctioning power A purely horizontal accountability strategy would not have been effective either. Given its complexity, the oversight strategy greatly benefited from the presence of numerous social sensors on site as well as from the professional expertise of specialized NGOs.
Articulated oversight between horizontal and social actors The case of the Matanza Riachuelo river basin Supreme Court Ombudsman NGOs Federal Court Grass-roots community organizations Auditor General Universities
Conclusions: Need to promote different forms of engagement between SAI and civil society The horizontalization of social accountability initiatives provides an important strategy to establish a mixed pro-accountability coalition with greater resources than those who can gather a purely social or horizontal initiative. Articulated oversight provides a very effective accountability mechanisms that brings together a wide variety of resources and inputs that no single form of accountability or actor could ever generate on its own. At the same time, there are other forms of engagement that civil society organizations can promote with SAI that do not necessarily presuppose their complete horizontalization in an articulated oversight network. As argued above, there is a wide catalogue of forms of engagement of civil society organizations that range from a purely external relationship to SAI to their integration into an oversight network. An encompassing politics of social accountability should rely on all those types of initiatives rather than concentrating all of its efforts in the promotion of a single form of engagement. Improving channels of communication between civil society and SAI can strengthen the external oversight of civil society (Tragedy of Once) The intermittent participation of civil society in the appointment of SAI authorities or in some moment of the oversight process can provide mutual benefits to formal and informal accountability actors Articulated oversight creates a hybrid form of accountability mechanism that combines the advantages of social and horizontal ones.