The political regime paves way for the environment necessary for social accountability. The South Asian governance pattern is more or less democratic by nature and hence allows for decentralization and better participation. This process is mainly facilitated through local government assemblies, village councils, representation, etc. The socio-cultural institutions also play a vital role in terms of effective usage of social accountability tools. One of the major methods to promote democratic relationships is to ensure participation. Regardless of the methods or strategies used, participatory approaches are more likely to have the greatest potential for influence if they can be strengthened by claims to participation as a legal right. The right to participation is potentially a more empowered form of engagement than participation by invitation from governments, donors, or higher authorities. It also supplements and extends other important democratic rights, such as the right to free and fair elections, and to assembly and freedom of expression. One area in which new rights to participation are being embodied into law is that of local governance.

 In the Philippines, for instance, the 1991 Local Government Code (LGC) requires citizen participation at all levels of local government through local development councils. Participation is mandated in the areas of development planning, education, health, bids and contracts, and policing. In theory, the LGC also permits direct representation of civil society and voluntary organizations on local government bodies, though this has been implemented unevenly. Legislation also mandates funds for training citizen representatives so they can participate effectively.

In Bolivia, the Law of Popular Participation of 1994 mandated broad-based participatory processes, starting at the neighborhood level, as part of local government decentralization. It also recognized the importance of social organizations that already existed (including indigenous communities, with their own practices and customs). About fifteen thousand such territorial base organizations are registered to participate in the planning process. In addition, the particular innovation of the Bolivia law was legally to create citizens’ oversight or vigilance committees in each municipality, which are empowered to freeze municipal budgets if actual expenditures vary too far from the planning processes. In Indonesia, following decades of authoritarian rule, hundreds of “forum wargas” (citizens’ forums) have emerged as a new space where citizens, local officials, business, and other sectors can meet, discuss local issues openly, and identify solutions.

Another strategy employed in certain countries has been to try to make local councils more inclusive of traditionally excluded populations. For instance, the same two Constitutional Amendments in India as just mentioned mandated that one-third of the seats should be reserved for women, as well as one-third of the offices of the chairperson. Similar reservations have been made for those of the lower castes and tribes. Making local councils more inclusive, the Constitution also gave them a great deal more power for planning for “economic development and social justice” in twenty-nine separate areas of local development, among them forests, education, and irrigation. Implementation of these new representation processes has been uneven, and the local councils are not always granted adequate financing from central government, but inclusion of new members in the political processes has been vast. About one million women and about 600,000 lower-caste or tribal members have now been elected to local government office.

But if we scrutinize then we shall see that the nature of democracy varies within South Asia itself. The recent trend in establishing democratic institutions is encouraging with Pakistan returning to a democratic government and Bhutan and Nepal emerging as democracies. In Bhutan after the launch of the first five year plan when there was an increment in the number of recruitments of civil servants, rules were laid out and adherence to the same was visualized as accountability. Followed by this several mechanisms of administrative accountability were put in place like traditional grievance redressal system, legislative mechanism, administrative and fiscal accountability, Royal Audit Authority and Royal Civil Service Commission.