This paper reviews the current literature on social accountability as a means to achieve good governance and increased public participation for improved public service delivery. After a brief discussion on concept and tools of social accountability, this paper illustrates that such innovations have led to improvements in the performance of state agencies and actors in varying contexts across the developing countries. Increased donor-led efforts to converge good governance agendas and neo-liberal economics tend to overlook politics that is central to struggles for social accountability. The complete faith of the neo-liberal development paradigm in market-friendliness, devolution, and working through NGOs often disregards politics within which such policies have to operate and on which they are ultimately dependent. The overarching issues of poverty and redistribution should caution development practitioners that such innovations and policy transfer[s] pertaining to social accountability might not become blunt instruments of 'traveled formalism'.

Citizen engagement is premised on the belief that people should have and want to have a say in the decisions that affect their lives.The handbook by the Canadian Policy Research Networks is intended to whet the appetite for citizen engagement for those new to citizen engagement, and for those with experience to deepen the analysis behind citizen engagement projects and provide a synthesis of the field and a concise reference tool. The long term vision is to contribute to the closing of the gap between governments and citizens, to allow public servants and politicians to reconnect with citizens' needs, priorities and values. This handbook is not a prescriptive how-to manual on citizen engagement. There is no one-sizefits- all in citizen engagement

A number of audiences may find this handbook useful, but the handbook has been written with the particular interests and perspectives of the government in mind - both public servants and politicians.

The paper provides a conceptual framework for assessing pro-poor characteristics of policy making as a process. A process approach focuses on stages of policy making and the role of the main actors, their institutional environment, including participation and accountability mechanisms, and the values and incentives that shape choices. The paper is informed by research by the Institute of Development Studies. The paper hopes to enable UNDP country offices and national counterparts to include policy making processes as an integral component in broader governance and poverty assessments.

The paper provides examples of critical questions to ask at each stage of the policy making process. It also includes a list of references to toolkits, handbooks and internet resources on issues concerned with propoor governance of policy with particular emphasis on participation in policy processes and participatory budgeting.

This paper describes the governance and social accountability mechanisms that Naga City in Philippines developed and institutionalized over the last 18 years. Over the years, Naga has developed a reputation for good governance, having crafted and operationalized mechanisms that demonstrate the virtues of transparency, accountability, predictability and participation: the four pillars of good governance.

Public services often fail poor people. Where formal systems of accountability are weak, organised groups of poor people or collective actors working on their behalf can sometimes play an important role in making service providers accountable using other, more informal channels. How and why does this happen? Research by the Centre for the Future State suggests that some reform processes provide better opportunities than others for collective action by groups working on behalf of poor communities. The capacity of such groups to organise effective, ongoing monitoring of public service delivery increases substantially when they have been a party to negotiating reforms, and when alliances have been formed between public sector and civil society actors.

The concept of social accountability has been introduced in this paper as a key building block for delivering change through the use of tools and mechanisms. Such tools provide a way for users to increase provider accountability in reform processes and ongoing service provision. The paper looks into the same in the context of water supply in Uganda. IT analyses the two sides of the social accountabilityu spectrum - the users and the providers. The principles of provider-side social accountability tools like sustainability and efficiency, transparency and partnership. The principles of user-side social accountability tools include users as agents of change, ownership and partnership.