In the wake of the massive and horrific natural disasters in Burma and China, it is important to examine how the provision of humanitarian relief relates to issues of voice and accountability. In a general sense, communication should be an absolutely vital element of any relief effort. Broadcasting or otherwise circulating crucial information about unsafe areas, survivor resources, and important health and public safety issues can help prevent further outbreaks of disease and post-disaster traumas. Apart from providing humanitarian information, an independent media sector (in tandem with civil society) can ensure that rebuilding efforts are consultative, transparent and accountable.
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For the past few weeks, the Philippine media have been intensely focused on a controversy regarding a foreign loan meant to fund the creation of the National Broadband Network (NBN), a project envisioned to seamlessly link all government offices across the archipelago via the Internet. Whistleblower Jun Lozada alleged in a senate committee hearing that a former high level official was poised to receive $130 million in kickbacks, a claim that has been repeatedly denied. Last November 2007, CommGAP organized a workshop entitled Generating Genuine Demand with Social Accountability Mechanisms in Paris, France. Since then, we have been reflecting on the word “accountability” and what it really means in the work of governance. I recently recalled that Dr. Kathleen Hall Jamieson defines the term in the context of political campaigns as candidates (and I would add officials and elites in other public settings) speaking in their own voices, thus keeping themselves open to challenge and criticism. Simply put, the essence of accountability in political discourse is being answerable to others for what one says in public.
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In development practice today, when you ask ‘How do you improve governance systems in developing countries in order to improve the lives of the poor?’ the so-called hard skills dominate the discourse. But what are these so-called hard skills? At their most mind-numbing these are number-crunching skills derived from a variety of quantitative social science disciplines. Beyond that these are skills in technical analysis and solution-finding. So, if you want to curb corruption in Country XYZ you find the technical experts on building world class procurement and other systems send in accountants and the like and so on. You design systems, set up an Anti-Corruption Commission. You deploy your notion of ‘best practice’ in the relevant technical field. All this is well and good but will that blow a corrupt public political culture away and with it the broader tolerance of corruption by the population at large? |
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Before I joined the World Bank about a year and half ago, I worked for DFID, the British Government's development ministry. DFID is part of the British Civil Service. That means I was a civil servant. And I attended a variety of training courses at the Civil Service College. And the experience taught me a thing or two about the sources of pressures for accountability faced by ordinary civil servants. And here I refer to pressures for accountability emanating from outside the civil service itself. I want to discuss the three leading sources of pressure.
For those of us who grew up in developing countries, political discourse about poverty is an everyday thing. Political campaigns in the Philippines, for example, place poverty upfront and center. Candidates for local posts, such as barangay (village) councilor, all the way up to the highest office in the archipelago invariably campaign on poverty issues. For instance, memorable slogans from relatively recent elections include "para sa mahirap" ("for the poor") and "pagkain sa bawat mesa" ("food on every table"). Not at all surprising in developing country contexts where poverty and inequality are so ubiquitous.
