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Giving voice to development
beneficiaries: the role of downward
accountability
Susan O’Leary
Monash University

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Motivation
o Participation, Empowerment, Rights
o Re-orients accountability relationships and
mechanisms
o Impact on planning, implementation, monitoring
and evaluation

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Giving voice to the beneficiary
o Desire, mindset and capability to embrace
empowering potential of downward
accountability?
o Mechanisms to actively encourage and
capacitate local communities

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Variations in how communities use and derive
benefit from different types of accountability
mechanisms

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Power
‘Presumably, if we want to see people empowered we
consider them to be currently disempowered i.e.
disadvantaged by the way power relations presently
shape their choices, opportunity and well-being.
If this is what we mean then we would benefit from
being better informed about the debates which have
shaped and refined the concept of power and its
operation’.
- Mosedale (2005)

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Research Focus
What conditions are necessary to ensure that NGO
beneficiaries reap the empowering potential of
downward accountability mechanisms?
• What role does power play in their design and use?

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Clarissa Hayward – “Power de-faced” (1998)
Conceptualising power - important starting point
in analysing empowerment outcomes
Power-with-a-face agency
Power de-faced networks

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Research Methods
o Two case studies of development NGOs in India
o Women’s empowerment programme
Rural Life
Unison

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Findings - overview
Conceptualisation of power
Underlying reasons for disempowerment
Attitudes towards beneficiary capabilities
Downward accountability mechanisms and controls
Empowerment and development outcomes

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Governance & communication
Community
Governance
•
•
•
•
Communication
•
Rural - Life
Hierarchical
Structured
Inflexible
NGO and
experts
Factual
information
Unison
• Overlapping
• Collaborative
• Led by community
• Purpose of plans
are clearly
explained

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Planning & Implementation
•
Planning
•
•
Implementation
•
Rural - Life
Undertaken by
NGO
Technical
planning
Emphasis on rules
and discipline
Rewards and
punishments
•
•
•
•
•
Unison
Co-produced with
community
Critical confrontation
of societal issues
Continuous needs
assessment
Advocacy
Flexibility

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Monitoring & Evaluation
Rural - Life
Unison
• Ensure adherence to • Compilation of data on
What?
rules
societal issues
• To highlight failures
• To identify societal issues
Why?
and reward discipline
and plan activities
accordingly
• Specific people
• Compiled by all participants
Who?
designated as rule
enforcers

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Empowerment outcomes
Rural Life
Unison
• Perpetuation of a dependency on external help
• Restriction of analytic ability for self-development
• Societal roles are not challenged
• Communities become knowledgeable and
competent participants
• Reliance on external help reduced
• Re-configuration of thought patterns and societal
roles

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Conclusion
o Simply providing opportunities for participation
is insufficient
o A propensity to participate is shaped by power
relations
o Reasons for disempowerment need to be
critically analysed and addressed