Ctizen Leadership and Democratic Accountability: Experiences from India, Brazil and South Africa

About the Project

PRIA initiated a new approach in nurturing learning between communities and civil societies of India, Brazil and South Africa. This was primarily driven by an initial conversation between the civil society organisations (CSOs) from these three countries, which have been active in other global forums. The central focus of the conversation was on ‘learning citizenship’. The civil society partners – POLIS in Brazil, Foundation for Contemporary Research (FCR) in South Africa and PRIA in India – shared their own experiences of strengthening democratic decentralisation through engaging citizen leaders in urban governance programme in their respective country contexts. The sharing led to the concretisation of a project proposal by PRIA, which the Ford Foundation agreed to support. It was premised on the understanding that India, Brazil and South Africa have made significant constitutional changes to give the local governance institutions the much desired constitutional rights as well as creating spaces for citizen participation. All these three countries have some striking similarities in reaping the benefits from the emerging liberalisation policies in terms of achieving spectacular economic growth and in terms of deepening democracy and proliferation of civil society activism. The current initiative intends to foster systematic learning among citizen educators and civil society actors through exposure visits, thematic documentation, exchange of dialogues and structured events in all the three countries.

Objectives

The objective of the project is to develop a body of knowledge on methodologies to prepare and strengthen citizen leadership, which could facilitate participation of citizens in, and demand accountability from, the institutions of local governance. It is envisaged that this body of knowledge would be developed by undertaking systematic research and documentation of the existing civil society initiatives in India, Brazil and South Africa.

The project aims to document success cases, where citizen leaders drawn from local communities have mobilised the communities to engage with the governance agencies, which eventually resulted in improved service delivery.

Each case study will have three sections:
1. Processes of collectivisation, leadership development and facilitation of mobilisation
2. Nature of engagement with governance
3. Outcome.

Assumptions/Hypothesis and Research Questions

1. Citizen participation is essential for accountable governance;
2. Increased accountability from government agencies leads to improvement in service delivery to the marginalised;
3. Successful engagement with governance enhances the feelings of citizenship among the marginalised.
The research questions, which the case studies will address under each section, are as follows:

1. Processes of collectivisation, leadership development and facilitation of mobilisation

• How collectives are build? By taking which groups? What processes are essential to build collectives?
• How leaders are selected from among the collectives? What qualities make one a citizen leader? How is the balance between the collectives and individual leaders maintained?
• What role do the leaders play in the collective mobilisation process? How do they act as catalysts? What mode of communication do they follow? How do they build the oneness of purpose among the collectives? What kind of information and awareness-building processes do they follow? Through what mechanisms do they engage the communities in collective reflection?
• What role does the facilitating organisation play in the process of collectivisation, leadership development and mobilisation? How does it equip the local communities with information and awareness, enhance their capacities to trust their skills and motivate them to engage with the governance agencies? What links and communication do the facilitating organisation establish between the communities and the government?

2. Nature of engagement with governance

• What kind of engagement (for example, negotiation/petition/campaign/working together through collaboration, etc.) the citizen leaders and the collectives have with various governance agencies responsible for service delivery?
• How do the governance agencies respond to the needs/interests/demands of the collectives?
• What factors lead to positive response?
• What do the collectives learn about the governance agencies (rulers) during their engagement? And how this learning affects their further engagement?

Outcome
It has two aspects:
a) Accountability

­ What pattern of accountability (for example, transparency in behaviour/checks in corruption/adherence to legal/policy provisions, etc.) from the government follows as a result of citizen participation?

b) Improved service delivery

­ What tangible outcomes (for example, improvement of existing facilities/new facilities/new policy) related to service delivery follow when governments are made accountable through citizen participation?

Abstracts of Documented Case Studies

Ten case studies have been documented by the organisations in India, South Africa and Brazil after exhaustive secondary literature review and field visits to the sites in three countries. The field visits included interaction with civil leaders, community, elected representatives and government officials. The abstracts of the case studies mentioned below are an overview of the democratic practices, citizens’ voices, civic leadership, role of intermediary organisations and accountability impact in the three countries.

List of Selected Case Studies

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