Accountability is the ability to hold organizations and individuals answerable for their policies, implementation processes and use of resources and responsible for performance. Accountability involves both answerability and enforcement. Social accountability refers to social movements that demand accountability through channels other than traditional vertical mechanisms (elections) and horizontal mechanisms. They often frame their claims in terms of legality and rights. It is an approach initiated by the civil society or the State, towards building an accountable and responsive government by relying on civic engagement.
Scope of the Unit
Social accountability is an emerging trend in the accountability relationship between civil society and government. Social accountability seeks to institutionalise durable societal control over policies by enabling collective actors to exercise voice in deliberative processes that monitor public decisions. The present module attempts to cover the following areas.
The fundamental concept of accountability, the accountability framework as conceptualized in the World Development Report, 2004 and also explores the three main types of accountability, viz. political, social and managerial.
The above mentioned descriptions are followed by illustrations on the concept of social accountability, its historical reference and the key principles.
The module also provides insights on the need of social accountability mechanisms and the aspects of the same, which are horizontal accountability, vertical forms of accountability and diagonal accountability.
The success of social accountability becomes visible by looking at the experiences of the developing countries. So the fourth section of the module attempts to describe the relevance of social accountability in developing countries.
The following section analyzes certain specific parameters, used for designing any interventions surrounding social accountability.
The module finally concludes by discussing the prevalence of formal (formed through legislations) and informal (traditional) institutions of social accountability and some of the country cases in this context
The key learnings to the unit will help the reader to
Understand the broad concept of accountability and in that context the fundamentals of social accountability.
Identify the need for social accountability and its relevance.
Understand the dimensions of social accountability in order to design policy level interventions.
Identify the institutions and systems of social accountability, with special reference to certain country cases.
