Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Stephen Kosack, Courtney Tolmie, Charles C. Griffin

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From the Ground Up

Brookings Institution Press

Chapter One

This book is based on a simple idea. No one is better placed to judge a government than those it governs, and no one is better positioned to monitor government services to ensure that they perform well and transparently than the citizens who use those services. This book charts the work of 16 civil society organizations-all from developing and transition economies -that have put this idea into practice. These organizations, referred to here as "independent monitoring organizations," unofficially monitor the decisions and actions of elected officials and unelected bureaucrats. The organizations are small, with limited resources and usually fewer than a dozen analysts. But they have insightfully diagnosed problems with government services as well as offered workable solutions that they have disseminated into the public discourse. And though their results have been out for only a few months at the time of this writing, several have already seen their solutions implemented.

In rich countries independent monitoring is almost a given. Civil society organizations, think tanks, advocacy groups, universities, lobbyists, professional organizations, and the like produce a constant stream of policy analysis, continuously monitor government spending and performance, and regularly offer proposals for change. For all practical purposes, the only outside assessments of rich countries that are done by public organizations are the comparative studies of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Article IV consultations. One OECD government assessing another's education policies and offering advice on how to improve them is nearly unthinkable-though it might be useful in many cases.

In developing and transition economies the situation is the opposite: external assessments of policies, institutions, and expenditures are common-particularly by bilateral donors and international organizations-while those by homegrown institutions are few and far between. The smaller and poorer the country, the less domestic capacity for internal assessment it is likely to have and the more likely that assessments of the government will be external. Because these external assessments are typically connected to aid programs, any policy changes they produce are also heavily influenced by external actors. If assessment from the outside is "external accountability" and assessment from the inside is "internal accountability," one might say that rich countries have less of the former and more of the latter, while poorer countries have the opposite.

The Transparency and Accountability Project shows that external and internal accountability share many features. Indeed, local organizations may take advantage of many of the same tools used by external agents. The key differences are in focus and strategy (see table 1.1, which ignores overlap between the two approaches for the sake of clarity). External accountability is typically achieved through visits of external teams that collaborate with a limited number of consultants from the country. These teams can rarely muster the resources, time, and personnel to penetrate into state and local government activities and may encounter additional barriers, such as language. Thus an external group can focus only on central government policies and budgets. Internal accountability, by contrast, is delivered by local independent monitoring organizations, which range from think tanks to small advocacy organizations. They face the opposite problem. Though usually interested in having a voice in national issues, they tend to approach problems from the ground up and often have limited access to national policymakers. Table 1.1 shows some of the key differences between external and internal accountability actors. The table is far from exhaustive, and its generalizations may not apply to all organizations engaged in either external or internal accountability. But it is helpful for understanding the core strengths and weaknesses of each approach.

External analysts begin their work knowing that the government, their ostensible client, will likely shelve all or most of their analysis and recommendations, unless they carry the promise of new resources. So external analysts' true clients are their own organizations. They conduct analyses to form recommendations that become terms for aid. In the process, external analysts typically produce first-rate analysis and often identify champions of reform within the government to further their cause. But fundamentally, external analysis is for external clients.

Several other characteristics of external accountability decisively influence its products. External analysts, usually professionals, use a standard economic framework to review public expenditures, paying close attention to the macroeconomic framework, the revenue side of the budget, and broad spending allocations over time. Thus their recommendations are typically at a fairly high level and would require changes to national programs and priorities. Their reports, in international languages like English, French, or Spanish, have limited and passive dissemination (online and perhaps in a few specialized bookstores). Inasmuch as external organizations monitor the implementation of their recommendations, they do so through periodic, formal supervisory visits, perhaps twice a year, augmented by support on the ground from the organizations' local offices.

By contrast, internal organizations have several clear advantages in increasing government accountability. They can monitor the government 24/7, they work in the local language, and they usually disseminate their findings and recommendations widely and actively to convince their fellow citizens to take action. They also have a personal stake in improving government services. As citizens, internal analysts tend to be problem-focused: something does not work, and they want it fixed. This focus does not preclude the same aims as external agents, but the small organizations discussed here typically know that they have clear advantages in focusing on particular programs or on limited domestic spending issues at the municipal, district, or regional level. Their suggested changes rarely stop with abstract economic principles, although many internal analysts would be perfectly capable of working at that level. Instead, they take much of the environment as unchangeable organizations overcome some of the many challenges of independent monitoring. The rest of this book focuses exclusively on the work of the independent monitoring organizations. But the rest of this chapter discusses some of the insights that emerged from the collaboration of the independent monitoring organizations with project staff and with each other, on issues from selecting a topic to developing recommendations and advocating for change. These are not intended to be cut-and-dried solutions or blueprints for certain success but simply a record of what the independent monitoring organizations themselves found helpful.

Selecting an analytical topic

Before an independent monitoring organization takes any of the steps described here, its...