Series: Are We Ready for Strategic Social Accountability? GPSA Note 4 PICKING PARTNERS AND ALLIES THAT BOLSTER YOUR SOCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY EFFORTS This is the fourth note in a six-part series discussing whether the social accountability field is already primed with the knowledge and capabilities to design, implement, fund, and learn from strategic interven- tions. Where implementing change relies on action being taken by many diverse actors, coalitions and partnerships are crucial to achieving impact. This note uses data from the first two rounds of GPSA app- lications to reflect on how the field is picking their partners and building platforms for collective action towards social accountability. It presents results from systematic analysis of more than 600 applications submitted to the Global Partnership for Social Accountability. August 2014 GLOBAL AND LOCAL I. PARTNERSHIPS IN THE GPSA The GPSA supports civil society and govern- “Partnerships” vs “coalitions” vs “multi-stake- ments to work together to solve critical go- holder initiatives” vernance challenges in developing countries. In this paper, formal partners may include both state and non-state actors they form part- To achieve this objective, the GPSA provides nerships with those whom they consider neces- strategic and sustained support to CSOs’ social sary to achieve the project’s objectives. accountability initiatives aimed at strengthening A coalition is a loose network of explicit and transparency and accountability. It builds on the tacit alliances across the state-civil society spec- World Bank’s direct and ongoing engagement trum that can contribute directly or indirectly to a project (private sector and unions as part with public sector actors, as well as an exten- of the civil society compact, and the 3 branches sive and diverse network of Global Partner or- of government, horizontal accountability, inter- ganizations, to create an enabling environment national development partners, etc.). In many in which citizen feedback is used to solve fun- cases, these stakeholders will remain as infor- damental problems in service delivery and to mal allies to the CSO. Multi-stakeholder initiatives are those in which strengthen public institutions. representatives from different organizations are brought together in hopes of facilitating coop- The GPSA’s grant-making window requires eration and exchange. More on these initiatives applicants to submit projects that rely on and their impact see here and here. multi-stakeholder partnerships and coalitions. This Note Series has been developed by Florencia Guerzovich (Consultant to the GPSA Knowledge Component, florcig@gmail.com) and Maria Poli (GPSA Team Member, mpoli@worldbank.org) with support from Jonathan Philips ( jonathanphillips@fas.harvard.edu). To access the complete Notes series, go to www.thegpsa.org /1 The Global Partnership’s ask, consistent with plan to continue business as usual dividing insights from knowledge about social accoun- tasks and go about their work in parallel routes tability and political economy work, is for appli- (Graph 1)? Or do they plan to pool together cants to justify whether the partners and allies strategies and resources in ways that bolster the they pick make strategic sense. That is, do these proposed project’s impacts (Graph 2)? partners and allies Graph 1: Business as usual in social accountability coalitions and partnership Source: Florencia Guerzovich. 2011. How to Articulate and Strengthen Pro-re- form Coalitions: The Case of the Participatory Anti- corruption Initiative in the Dominican Republic. The World Bank. Unpublished Manuscript. Graph 2: GPSA’s bet regarding strategic social accountabilities Source: Adapted from Florencia Guerzovich. 2011. How to Articulate and Strengthen Pro-re- form Coalitions: The Case of the Participatory Anti- corruption Initiative in the Dominican Republic. The World Bank. Unpublished Manuscript. /2 The GPSA’s ask is a difficult one when we con- sider that a recent study by GEOfunders argues GLOSSARY that while partnerships and coalitions are an ef- fective way for civil society groups to increase Collective action problem: their impact, many times these groups do not a situation in which there have the capacities to overcome collective ac- are multiple individuals tion problems and advance joint projects. who would benefit from a certain action, but the fact Moreover, there are significant risks to invest- that costs or benefits are ing in a true partnership as each side places shared across individuals their trust in the integrity and commitment of makes it unlikely that any one individual can or will the other side. Partnerships between civil soci- undertake it on their own ety and public officials therefore require a high (see Olson 1965). level of commitment, trust and active manage- ment in order to succeed. Our approach to drawing lessons from GPSA Appli- Keep in mind that our analysis did not fully reas- cants: sess the country context to determine whether an application responded precisely to local cir- •Selection of a sample of 40 of 644 GPSA applications cumstances. Rather, we assessed to what extent •Scored each for their strategic political approach the applicant discussed, analyzed and showed •Extra attention to the best and worst evidence of responsiveness to their own assess- applications ment of the local context. •4 Components of social accountability Want to learn more about the GPSA’s selection strategies coded as present, partial or absent process and our methodology? Check out GPSA- Note 1. IDENTIFYING PARTNERSHIPS AND COALITIONS THAT BOLSTER SOCIAL II. ACCOUNTABILITY EFFORTS The expectation of the GPSA’s theory of (2) facilitate collaboration between the social change is that while at country level there are accountability initiatives of civil society actors many pro-accountability stakeholders and ini- and state institutions of accountability (some- tiatives and sometimes they achieve great re- times also referred to as “horizontal” or “inde- sults, much more would happen if they could pendent” institutions of accountability) ) in or- encourage politically smart collaboration and der to oversee actors in the executive who are coordination, in particular between state and responsible for service delivery. non-state actors. Indeed, the two key outcomes in the GPSA’s theory of change are to: This expectation is grounded on a growing lite- rature and a wealth of tacit knowledge that sug- (1) increase constructive engagement between gest that the kind of concrete policy changes civil society actors and government decision the GPSA aims to support are politically difficult makers in the executive responsible for im- because they often threaten powerful vested proved service delivery; and interests. These powerful actors benefit /3 from keeping things the way they are, so they engage in politically informed, joint problem- have incentives to fight back and block change. solving, is important, but difficult. Conversely, CSOs often have limited resources The costs to establishing partnerships and (votes, lobbying, and organizational capacity, building coalitions are high and stakeholders etc.) for the magnitude of their task. often need to compromise and take risks if the In this context, lone crusaders are unlikely on other parties do not uphold their part of the their own to pull off a project to meet GPSA- deal. The GPSA aims to encourage partnerships style ambitions. Pro-reform partnerships and and coalitions by acknowledging and financing coalitions that build on others’ resources, the costs of working with other stakeholders. bridging diverse forms of technical, institutional The GPSA encourages applicants to identify and political capital, increase the likelihood of partners and allies who may complement the change (see here also here, here, here, and applicant’s expertise, outreach capacity and in- here). These collective efforts, which can en- fluence in working towards the proposed ob- compass a wide range of actors, including na- jectives. As Box 1 discusses, the GPSA also aims tional and subnational politicians, policymakers, to provide intangible resources to facilitate coa- non-governmental actors, unions, and interna- lition building. tional donors, can increase the political space a Furthermore, these partnerships and coalitions lone CSO will have to implement reforms (see often need to be strong enough to outmaneu- here). ver the opposition coalitions that resist change. But there are some catches. This kind of collec- If these conditions are not met, the “willing” tive action, in which local stakeholders ideally CSO is likely to fail in her attempt to reform and produce change, let alone to scale it or sustain it. BOX 1 How can the GPSA facilitate politically savvy multi-stakeholder coordination? The GPSA also aims to facilitate multi-stakeholder collaboration by linking and providing resources and information to overcome the lack of trust and organizational silos that often impede state-society communication. With its unique resources and convening power, the World Bank can create more space for state-CSO interaction and improve infor- mation-sharing between grantees and governments. By knowing when and where the ‘windows of opportunity’ are, the Bank can help to close the feedback loop and help transform engaged citizens into more responsive governments. The Participatory Anticorruption Initiative (IPAC in its Spanish acronym) in the Dominican Republic provides a concrete example of constructive engagement between civil society organizations, the private sector and government decision makers in the executive branch facilitated by international cooperation agencies led by the World Bank. Through an explicit coordination effort, international agencies gradually enabled local and foreign pro-reform stakeholders to bet- ter articulate and strengthen a multi-stakeholder coalition. The resulting changes were modest, but they were ones on which many reformers had long given up. New opportunities also arose for concrete reform efforts. In 3 years, IPAC contributed to the following results: US$2 million per month savings on procurement of medical equipment and medi- cines; 3,000 government bank accounts closed, and a single Treasury Account established in all Central Government institutions; 25% reduction in the cost of insulin in People’s Pharmacies in 2 years. You can learn more about the IPAC’s results in this video. /4 To check whether GPSA applicants acted on these insights about the importance of carefully se- lected and structured partnerships, we identified a series of indicators that captured the most im- portant strategic considerations and could read- ily have been included in applicants’ submissions. We present the questions in Table 1. Table 1: Key Questions to identify politically-informed partnerships and coalitions 1 Does the project identify the stakeholders who are crucial to supporting the project and com- plementary to the organization’s own capabilities (i.e. identify stakeholders’ value add to the partnership or coalition)? 2 Does the project adopt specific measures such as formal collaborations – comprising regular feedback exchanges and specific commitments on the part of the stakeholders involved- to build the institutional basis of a coalition? 3 Does the project make efficient use of existing networks and platforms to enable collabora- tion (avoiding duplication)? 4 Does the proposal identify what benefits and threat the project creates for partners and coali- tion members? 5 Does the project spell out how the partnership or coalition will increase the political space, capital or resources that can be brought to bear? 6 Does the project identify the barriers that often pre-empt citizens from mobilizing and engag- ing in monitoring and accountability activities? Does it state how it will address these barriers to collective action? ARE SOCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY III. PARTNERSHIPS AND COALITIONS FORGED WITH A POLITICAL LENS? Below is what we found in our analysis of GPSA they must be included as part of the project team applications. In the GPSA application, appli- and are expected to participate in the financial cants are expected to identify the contributions sharing scheme (see the Proposal’s budget guid- of other parties and spell out their value added. ance). Partners were clearly valued in applications. If partners are to take on specific responsibili- Indeed, 25 out of the 40 proposals we reviewed, ties within the proposal that are directly related identify stakeholders who are crucial to support- to its planned activities, outputs and outcomes, ing the project and complementary to the organ- ization’s capabilities. /5 Yet, it was rare that proposals provided a clear rationale for the partners they had selected, or demon- strated how they would help create the political space to promote reform. Perhaps the most striking finding is that applicants rarely, if ever, discussed how and why the costs of forging coalitions would be justified, for instance in terms of helping them navigate obstacles to reform. Nineteen out of forty entries failed to spell out how the partnership or coalition will increase the political space, capital or resources that can be brought to bear. A further eighteen only provide tentative or somewhat loose explanations. PARTNERS THAT ADD VALUE CSOs In terms of the coalition building process, we think that allies must have a reason to participate in a coalition. Yet only one single proposal in our sample identifies what benefits and threats the project would create for partners and coalition members. More generally, 37 proposals out of 40 did not acknowledge that there are barriers that could prevent citizens from mobilizing and engaging in monitoring and accountability activities, let alone address how the project would counter them. Old and new research about elite civil society organizations, citizen mobilization, and technology enabled feedback loops suggest that presuming that these allies and partners will have a straightforward inter- est in joining in is problematic at best (see e.g. here, here, here, and here). COALITIONS THAT TAKE INTO ACCOUNT COST CSOs Another problem is lack of engagement with existing organizations who are well-positioned to influ- ence social accountability processes. For example; applicants fail to refer to parent-teacher associa- tions in social accountability projects at the school level; or they propose to form new citizen groups, such as “Citizen Budget Forums,” without acknowledging whether others already do this work. Appli- cants often focus on one sector and few build bridges to other sectors (or let us know they are aware of what is happening there). PARTNERS THAT ARE WELL PLACED CSOs /5 Encouragingly, 22 out of the 40 applications propose to use existing platforms and networks to enable collaboration. Only 17 spell out specific measures to strengthen the institutional foundations for the coalitions they propose. EXISTING PLATFORMS AND NETWORKS CSOs One new frontier for strategic social accountability is the potential role of horizontal state account- ability institutions, such as ombudsman offices or supreme audit institutions, in overseeing service de- livery by the executive branch. These state actors matter because they can influence the enforcement and design of official state institutions for bureaucratic accountability. Despite the potential for these collaborations, only 27% of the 100s of eligible applications received in the two rounds proposed col- laborating with public accountability institutions such as ombudsmen and audit offices, and only 26% proposed to use information generated by these agencies. PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY INSTITUTIONS CSOs IV. OUR TAKEAWAY In short, proposals provide very limited analysis of coalition-building as a broader tactic to align More on civil society-state ac- the incentives of public, private and civil society countability institutions coopera- actors. In omitting how they will join up their in- tion? terventions and how they will take advantage of (1) GPSA Results framework the GPSA’s offer to pay for the transaction costs (2) Carolina Cornejo, Aranzazu of building meaningful partnerships, too many Guillan & Renzo Lavin, “When Supreme Audit Institutions En- entries look like they are proposing to imple- gage with Civil Society: Exploring ment social accountability as usual (on the need Lessons from the Latin Ameri- of building meaningful joined-up interventions can Transparency Participation in the social accountability field, see e.g. here.) and Accountability Initiative,” U4 In too many cases, the proposed project seeks Practice Insight No. 5 (Bergen: Chr. Michelson Institute, 2013): to build the capacity of new groups so that they can implement the work on their own. These http://www.cmi.no/publications/ new groups are likely to be more inexperienced, file/4999-when-supreme-audit- unfamiliar and politically threatening than pre- institutions-engage-with-civil.pdf existing groups. They also promote a ‘lone cru- sader’ approach, working in isolation from the public officials responsible for implementing tions of trust, information and communication change, rather than establishing the connec- that are at the heart of strategic social account- ability relations. /6