Invited Spaces, Invited Participation: Effects of Greater Participation on Accountability in Service Delivery

Aiyar, Yamini

doi:10.1080/14736489.2010.483370

Cited by 24 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Much research on NREGA has focused on patterns of uneven implementation (Drèze and Oldiges ; Ramachandran and Rawal ), on processes of monitoring and auditing (Menon ; Aiyar ) and on the scheme's poverty alleviation potential (Marius‐Gnanou ; Drèze and Khera ).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

MGNREGA in Tamil Nadu: A Story of Success and Transformation?

Carswell

Neve

2014

Journal of Agrarian Change

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Social protection has emerged as a key driver of development policy at the beginning of the 21 st century. It is widely considered a 'good thing' that has the potential not only to alleviate poverty and vulnerability but also to generate more transformative outcomes in terms of empowerment and social justice. Based on an ethnographic study of the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), India's flagship social protection policy, this article takes a critical look at what this policy's 'success' consists of. The study was carried out in Tamil Nadu, a state widely presented as a 'success' in terms of MGNREGA's implementation, and describes who participates in the scheme and how success is understood and expressed at different social and bureaucratic levels. In terms of MGNREGA's outcomes, we conclude that the scheme is benefitting the poorest households -and Dalits and women in particular -especially in terms of providing a safety net and as a tool for poverty alleviation. But the scheme does more than that. It has also produced significant transformative outcomes for rural labourers, such as pushing up rural wage levels, enhancing low-caste workers' bargaining power in the labour market and reducing their dependency on high-caste employers. These benefits are not only substantial but also transformative in that they affect rural relations of production and contribute to the empowerment of the rural labouring poor. However, in terms of creating durable assets and promoting grassroots democracy, the scheme's outcomes are much less encouraging.

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

MGNREGA in Tamil Nadu: A Story of Success and Transformation?

Carswell

Neve

2014

Journal of Agrarian Change

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“…5-6). Apart from voting, which is one of the fundamental tools for citizens to express their confidence in their representatives or the government, a triangular linkage among the following elements is necessary to enhance both citizen participation and government accountability: (i) access to information which strengthens people's awareness; (ii) implementation which is grounded on people's understanding; (iii) grievance management through which people's complaints are handled justly (Aiyar, 2010).…”

Section: Government Accountability and Responsivenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deconstructing the multi-layered nature of citizen participation in Vietnam: conceptual connotations, discourses of international development, and the country’s institutional context

Kwak

2019

Asian Journal of Political Science

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Citizen participation is challenging to define in terms of meaning and application. This article begins with setting out the multi-dimensional nature of citizen participation in development. Through conceptual and contextual explorations, this article deconstructs the layers in the following ways: First, citizen participation is embedded with several conceptual connotations, therefore it is manifested to varying degrees and in different scopes of opportunity for citizens to affect policy decisions. Varieties of participation become more diverse when it comes to the power dynamics of different stakeholders, ranging from the government to citizens. Furthermore, its substantive presentation is intimately linked with the variables of citizen empowerment and government responsiveness. The second layer concerns the participatory development approaches of external development agencies. This article articulates how development discourses have integrated and developed the concept of participation, exploring the trajectory and critical concerns raised. The final layer concerns context, particularly Vietnam's legal and policy frameworks, which explores consistencies and discrepancies between institutional settings and the presentation of citizen participation.

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“…The origins of these capacities are not made clear in the particular studies, although at the collective level, it seems likely that these are built up over time through successive rounds of bargaining with the state (Houtzager and Joshi, 2008), often over a prolonged period. An example is the MKSS' right to information campaign in India, which started in the early 1990s, gained partial success in 2000 when the Indian state of Rajasthan passed the right to information act (Ramkuma, 2008), but continued for another five years before the nation-wide Right to Information Act (RTI) was passed (Aiyar, 2010;Ramkuma, 2008).…”

Section: Civil Societymentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding Social Accountability: Politics, Power and Building New Social Contracts

Hickey

King

2016

The Journal of Development Studies

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Calls to deepen levels of social accountability within social protection interventions need to be informed by the now extensive experience of promoting social accountability in developing countries. Drawing on a systematic review of over 90 social accountability interventions, including some involving social protection, this paper shows that politics and context are critical to shaping their success. We argue that the politics of social protection and of social accountability resonate strongly with the broader project of transforming statesociety relations in developing countries. This requires a reconceptualisation of social accountability and social protection in terms of the broader development of 'social contracts', and that the current emphasis on promoting bottom-up forms of accountability needs to be balanced by efforts to strengthen and legitimise public authority in developing countries.

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Invited Spaces, Invited Participation: Effects of Greater Participation on Accountability in Service Delivery

Cited by 24 publications

References 13 publications

MGNREGA in Tamil Nadu: A Story of Success and Transformation?

MGNREGA in Tamil Nadu: A Story of Success and Transformation?

Deconstructing the multi-layered nature of citizen participation in Vietnam: conceptual connotations, discourses of international development, and the country’s institutional context

Understanding Social Accountability: Politics, Power and Building New Social Contracts

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