Social accountability, citizenship and social protection in the MENA region: exploring the linkages

Bergh, Sylvia I.

doi:10.4337/9781786431998.00016

Social Policy in the Middle East and North Africa 2019

DOI: 10.4337/9781786431998.00016

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Social accountability, citizenship and social protection in the MENA region: exploring the linkages

Sylvia I. Bergh¹

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2024

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Introduction: Social Accountability and Civic Innovation in the Arab World

Vloeberghs,

Bergh

2024

EADI Global Development Series

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The Middle East and North Africa region has been absent form stocktaking exercises on social accountability initiatives (SAI), an umbrella term to designate citizen-led tools aimed at socio-political change. We argue that this sidelining is unwarranted, given the proliferation of participatory governance initiatives, civic associations and popular mobilisation in Arab societies after 2011. Whereas the struggle for improved accountability in the Arab world remains under-researched, analysis of authoritarian regime tactics has proliferated. The fact is, however, that many Arab societies have experimented with mechanisms to apply political pressure on corrupt elites while international donors have launched diverse SAIs, including community score cards and participatory and gender-responsive budgeting initiatives. In this chapter, we first identify this double gap: not only has the literature on SAIs overlooked the MENA region but scholarship on the Middle East has largely failed to recognise initiatives launched across the region over the past decade as SAIs. Then, we aim to address the blind spot of Arab SAI’s as pathways towards improved governance. Finally, we present an overview of extant literature and introduce a set of four research questions to better understand what social accountability means for people on the ground. These questions focus on the various meanings of social accountability (musā’ala vs muhāsaba), its modes of mobilisation, the responses from authorities to such initiatives and their overall outcomes.

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Introduction: Social Accountability and Civic Innovation in the Arab World

Vloeberghs,

Bergh

2024

EADI Global Development Series

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

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Social accountability, citizenship and social protection in the MENA region: exploring the linkages

Cited by 1 publication

References 15 publications

Introduction: Social Accountability and Civic Innovation in the Arab World

Introduction: Social Accountability and Civic Innovation in the Arab World

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