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Local government discretion and accountability: A local governance framework
June 2007
Social Development Department, The World Bank
Executive Summary
Objective and target audience
Social accountability approaches are broad range of actions and mechanisms beyond voting that citizens can use to hold accountable the state and providers of public services. These approaches could be as simple as pressuring local governments to publish budgets, or more complicated, such as participatory budgeting or social audits where citizen groups inspect, for example, public procurement policies and processes.
Often times, when opportunities for governance reform at the national level are limited, there may be local level entry points (World Bank, 2007a).1 This Economic and Sector Work (ESW) examines how social accountability approaches—together with the public sector (supply-side) approaches—can help create such entry points, when institutionalized into local government operations. The main objective of
this report is to present a coherent and comprehensive approach for decentralizing countries to achieve a high degree of local government discretion accompanied by robust accountability mechanisms.
To this end, this ESW presents an analytical framework of local governance through the lens of accountability. This ESW intends to establish a methodological basis for analyzing linkages between
decentralization and accountability. The report is based on desk reviews and interviews--it does not provide empirical research testing the report’s arguments. Rather, it provides many country specific
examples, and three detailed case studies (on Uganda, the Philippines, and Kerala, India) to demonstrate how the presented analytical framework could provide a useful method for studying accountability implications of decentralization reforms. It should be noted here that presenting such a framework runs the risk of generalizing issues that are mostly local context specific. The goal here is definitely not to build a one-size fits all prescription as such. This is why the local governance strategy proposed in the final chapter underlines the importance of developing systematic analytical tools and operational approaches that would rely on country specific information on local power structures, interests, and socio-economic conditions. Accordingly, the use of the analytical framework proposed here is very much dependent on local realities and it is the local policy makers in client countries that would ultimately decide what is suitable for their country and what is not.
Recently, client countries, donors, and the Bank have expressed increasing interest in and demand for participatory mechanisms, which could enhance local accountability, consequently strengthen governance, and reduce corruption. This report—a direct response to this growing interest—presents various social accountability mechanisms that could complement public sector accountability approaches. It also highlights the operational challenges the Bank’s projects on local governance reform must often confront. Accordingly, the findings of this ESW provide, in one comprehensive framework, guidance on both macro policy-making and implementation of decentralization reforms. As such, this report provides the Bank with a basis to develop an integrated local governance strategy to guide lending and non-lending operations.
The primary audience for this report comprises public policy makers and local governance stakeholders in client countries, governmental and non-governmental practitioners and policy advisers working on local governance, local development, and public sector reforms, and the Bank staff advising countries on local government reforms. The secondary audience includes academics in the fields of economics, public administration, public policy, and social development.
Footnote:
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The Governance and Corruption Strategy Paper of the Bank’s Development Committee acknowledges that even when opportunities for governance reform at the national level are limited, there may be entry points at the local level.
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