How do we shape and navigate pathways to social accountability scale? Introducing a middle-level Theory of Change

Guerzovich, Florencia; Aston, Tom; Levy, Brian; Schommer, Paula Chies; Haines, Rebecca J.; Cant, Sue; Santos, Grazielli Faria Zimmer

doi:10.51744/crpp1

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…9 This joint effort between activists and state actors attracted media attention and inspired the creation of new organisations across the country, most of them linked to local business associations or religious groups that also combined strategies of raising awareness and civic auditing to curb corruption at the local level. forces with public authorities to improve governance (Guerzovich & Chies Schommer, 2018;Montevechi, 2021). One of the interviewees who knows well the observatories since their origins, highlighted that they are formed by groups of people who already know each other and are used to spending time doing offline activities together:…”

Section: Joint Forces For Increasing Transparency and Social Control ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Digital Media and Grassroots Anti-Corruption

2024

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I am especially grateful to Bartosz Ślosarski and Renata Włoch, among others, for organising a fruitful research stay for me at the Digital Economy Lab at the University of Warsaw in the autumn of 2022.All the authors who have contributed to this book with their chapters also have my gratitude, for they have entered into a fruitful dialogue with the idea of anti-corruption technologies that I have developed in this volume, and have always been willing to revise their respective chapters to make them even more capable of narrating the encounters that anti-corruption activists have with digital media and technologies. Among these authors, I would especially like to thank the members of the BIT-

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Section: Joint Forces For Increasing Transparency and Social Control ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Digital Media and Grassroots Anti-Corruption

2024

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“…OSB was created as a networked initiative aiming to offer training and technical support to citizens in their own municipalities to hold local authorities and public services accountable. The OSB's best practice methodology includes a series of precise steps to organise social observatories that monitor public procurement and public services by opening public data and joining From concerned citizens to civic bots forces with public authorities to improve governance (Guerzovich & Chies Schommer, 2018;Montevechi, 2021).…”

Section: Joint Forces For Increasing Transparency and Social Control ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

From concerned citizens to civic bots: The bottom-up fight against corruption in Brazil from a longitudinal perspective

Odilla

2024

Digital Media and Grassroots Anti-Corruption

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“…First and foremost, recent literature has paid growing attention to questions of scale. Given that there is an overall consensus among scholars and practitioners that the uneven successes of citizen‐led accountability have largely been felt at the local level, several attempts have been made to move our thinking beyond the local and to take accountability work to larger scale (Fox, 2016; Guerzovich et al, 2022). One approach is to look at the “accountability ecosystem” as a whole and identify entry points that offer the greatest leverage (Halloran, 2021).…”

Section: The Changing Accountability Terrain: Scale Strategies and Ou...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Citizen action for accountability in challenging contexts: What have we learned?

Gaventa

Joshi

Anderson

2023

Development Policy Review

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Summary Motivation While much is known about how citizens mobilize and make claims for accountability in more democratic, stable, and peaceful settings, little is known about how accountability dynamics work in more challenging contexts—those more democratically weak, politically fragile, and affected by legacies of violence and conflict. Purpose This article introduces a special issue that brings together findings from across the Action for Empowerment and Accountability programme. The programme explored citizen action for accountability and citizens' experiences of governance in Mozambique, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan and, to a lesser degree, Egypt—countries that reflect challenging conditions now common in many places across the world. Methods and approach We introduce and summarize the key findings of eight commissioned articles—some which explore specific themes across the body of research, and some that report findings of particular multi‐country studies. We analyse these findings in relation to what they tell us about the contextual factors that matter, the strategies adopted, and the consequences of citizen‐led social and political action. Findings We find a number of contextual challenges for citizen action that are common, though not unique, to these settings. Despite authoritarian governance histories, and norms of fear, low expectations, and patriarchal exclusion we see diverse examples of social and political action, both open questioning of authorities and dissent and more under the radar and mediated responses. Such efforts have led to increased visibility of grievances, increased citizen agency, some concrete responses from authorities, and evidence of progressive norm change. Policy implications We argue that even in challenging contexts there are prospects for finding some space for productive citizen engagement and citizen‐led social and political action. These are more likely to be found from taking a “citizen‐eye” view to relevant governance dynamics, actors, and identifying the most important issues. Networks and alliances, including with donors, are significant. But accountability goals in such contexts need to be realistic and recognize the importance of small steps and establishing the building blocks of better governance.

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How do we shape and navigate pathways to social accountability scale? Introducing a middle-level Theory of Change

Cited by 6 publications

References 52 publications

Digital Media and Grassroots Anti-Corruption

Digital Media and Grassroots Anti-Corruption

From concerned citizens to civic bots: The bottom-up fight against corruption in Brazil from a longitudinal perspective

Citizen action for accountability in challenging contexts: What have we learned?

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