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How do we know when strategies to promote accountability get traction? If and when the ‘powers that be’ respond to citizen voice, how can we tell when those responses involve accountability? After all, authorities may provide just promises, or one-off material concessions—while falling short of more accountable governance. Plus, who decides what ‘counts’ as a meaningful response? For advocates and policy reformers committed to persuading governments to listen to citizen voice, these real-world ambiguities pose everyday challenges.

This blog unpacks some of the terms that we use to describe how those in power respond to accountability initiatives. The goal is to inform practical efforts to keep track of whether our efforts are working.

The main proposition here is that government responses to civil society voice and action can fall into three overlapping categories: response, responsiveness, and accountable responsiveness. Officials may promise changes—that’s a response. Yet they may or may not deliver on those promises. In contrast, when the powerful follow through on their commitments—that’s responsiveness. Officials that go even further and actually explain their actions (or inaction) are engaging in accountable responsiveness.

Disentangling government responses from responsive governance

Let’s say that we are analyzing a citizen campaign for better access to medicine, water, or fertilizer. Conceivably, the government could respond to voice and action by delivering on some of those material demands. Yet this could be a temporary, discretionary response, with no assurance of future consistency or answerability.

This kind of response runs the risk of repeating similar problems in the future because there are no changes in policy or practice to avoid them. Such response scenarios may look like a policy win in the short term, but can easily be withdrawn in the future, at the government’s discretion.

Discretionary responses also leave the door open for certain officials to give preferential treatment to politically loyal clientele or other favored groups. This means, for example, that subsidized fertilizer may be captured by large commercial growers (who may in turn quietly share kickbacks with government officials). If a government fertilizer program does reach poor farmers, officials may require votes or bribes in exchange. In contrast, agencies that follow rules and listen respectfully to independent watchdogs would deliver to smallholders in need—regardless of their political or ethnic affiliation. Better yet, agencies that follow rules would also deliver actual fertilizer (with no filler) at the right time, before the planting season and ahead of the rains (learn more about this scenario in a peasant movement campaign in Mexico).

The point here is that in a discretionary response scenario, external pressure could lead corrupt or partisan bureaucrats to deliver some of the medicines or fertilizer that they should—but they remain in power, ready to back out as soon as external pressure and public oversight subside. In contrast, sometimes government fails to deliver on commitments for different reasons—such as when well-intentioned officials are constrained by weak institutions, insufficient resources under their control, or lack of political clout. Outsiders face the challenge of how to figure out why such official responses fall short, when the government looks like a black box that they cannot see inside.

To deliver on systemic changes, new laws or better policies are often not enough; sustainable changes in practices may also require behind-the-scenes public sector reforms. For example, political will is necessary but not sufficient to ensure that governments can actually deliver enough fertilizer to all eligible farmers well before the planting season. Agencies also need both budgets and institutional capacity to follow through. Advocates can make that point—especially if rights defenders can ground their calls for accountability in evidence of whether the agency did what it committed to do (see, for example, the third section of this paper).

To summarize:

Government responses can be either positive or negative. Both advocates for and analysts of transparency, participation, and accountability tend to look for positive government responses to citizen action campaigns, but we might also recognize that official responses to voice can include not so positive responses as well. A few examples include:

• one-off concessions, which could be minor or intangible
• deflection of demands with big promises that are not met
• material concessions that may be tangible but require political subordination in exchange (e.g., clientelism)
• use of selective concessions to divide social organizations
• reprisals, bribes, or threats.

Government responses can be both positive and negative. Different government actors can respond to the same advocacy campaign in different and possibly contradictory ways at the same time. For example, the officials at the negotiating table may lack leverage over other officials who influence the programs and budget allocation processes that advocacy campaigns want to change.

Responsiveness involves follow-through by authorities. If government actors respond to citizen voice by making commitments that that they later fail to keep—or deliver in very limited or biased ways—those responses do not qualify as responsiveness. Yet even broken promises may still turn out to be relevant for future advocacy campaigns insofar that they at least create a reference point or baseline for later accountability claims.

Government responses can change over time and follow different pathways. The effort to distinguish between response and responsiveness is complicated by the need to address change over time. For example, the same first steps (government promises and actions) could eventually become recognizable as the beginning of a pathway to change—or lead to a dead end. It may be difficult to tell the difference between the two possibilities in the short term. Key indicators of responsiveness include:

• authorities who keep their promises
• commitments that are sustained over time
• policy changes that institutionalize public participation and oversight by both government and civil society
• changes in budgets and internal management systems that enable the delivery of promised resources or rights.

Trust-building gestures from authorities, such as meaningful collaborative practices and sharing user-centered policy information are also very relevant steps—perhaps necessary though not sufficient to constitute tangible progress.

The difference between government responses and responsive governance may depend on the clout of reform-minded insiders. At first, this focus on whether government authorities keep their promises could seem to rely too much on individual officials who may come and go, in contrast to a broader goal of system change. That said, champions who are willing to push from the inside are necessary for governments to deliver promises of change. To map possible entry points for change, how might advocates best keep track of the ebb and flow of influence of responsive insiders? They matter most when they take tangible actions that reduce the costs or risks of collective action—thereby empowering external constituencies for change. Such ‘sandwich strategies’ can trigger virtuous circles of mutual empowerment between rights defenders inside and outsider and insider the state.  See case studies and comparative analysis of these rare but important openings here.

To step back to the big picture, only some governmental responses deserve to be called responsiveness—where responses are sustained and where promises of change are kept, at least to some degree.

Key characteristics of policy-maker responsiveness include:

• Building trust: sustained patterns of meeting commitments.
• Listening and power-sharing: inclusionary changes in policy processes involving recognition of social actors and their proposals for public sector decision-making.
• Paying it forward: investing resources in bolstering governmental capacity to deliver.
• Enabling collective action: tangible measures by authorities to reduce the risks and costs.

Responsive and accountable governance: unpacking the overlap

What ‘counts’ as accountability? The idea is ambiguous, malleable, and contested. Understandings of the idea vary widely across cultures and institutions. For some, accountability involves reporting upwards to powerholders, while rights defenders focus on holding authorities to account. The idea of checks and balances suggests mutual, horizontal accountability across institutions. Some accountability initiatives target individuals, while others focus on institutions. That said, one common thread that holds diverse understandings together is that accountability involves decision-makers having to explain their actions: answerability.

The idea of responsiveness sounds like it involves accountability. That seems intuitive; the ideas certainly overlap. Yet the key distinction between them is that responsiveness can be at the discretion of those in power, rather than an institutional obligation. Plus, policy changes could be responsive without necessarily involving public answerability. The idea of accountable responsiveness suggests that powerholders respond to citizen voice with explanations, and possibly consequences. That is why Figure 1 below depicts accountable responsiveness as a subset of responsiveness.