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77Andrea Cornwall and

John Gaventa

Bridging the gap: citizenship,participation and accountability

IntroductionAround the world, a growing crisis of legitimacycharacterises the relationship between citizens and theinstitutions that affect their lives. In both North and South,citizens speak of mounting disillusionment withgovernment, based on concerns about corruption, lack ofresponsiveness to the needs of the poor and the absenceof a sense of connection with elected representatives andbureaucrats (Commonwealth Foundation 1999).

As traditional forms of political representation are beingre-examined, direct democratic mechanisms areincreasingly being drawn upon to enable citizens to play amore active part in decisions which affect their lives. Inthis context, the questions of how citizens – especially thepoor – express voice and how institutional responsivenessand accountability can be ensured have becomeparamount.

In this article, we explore some of these challenges.Repositioning participation to embrace concerns withinclusive citizenship and rights, we examine a range ofcontemporary participatory mechanisms and strategiesthat seek to bridge the gap between citizens and thestate.

New contexts, new challengesIn many countries, measures to bring government ‘closerto the people’ through decentralisation and devolutionhave prompted shifts in approaches to service delivery thathave widened spaces for citizen involvement. At the sametime, the increasing marketisation of service delivery inmany countries has introduced new roles for those whowere formerly the ‘beneficiaries’ of government services.Users have come to be seen as ‘consumers’ or ‘clients’and civil society organisations have become significant co-producers of what in the past were largely state functions.To some, these new roles are seen as welcome forms ofpartnership between the state, the market and civilsociety, while to others they suggest the danger that thestate is off-loading its larger social responsibilities toprivate or non-governmental actors (Cornwall andGaventa, 2000).

Bridging the gapIn the past, there has been a tendency to respond to thegap that exists between citizens and state institutions inone of two ways. On the one hand, attention has beenmade to strengthening the processes of participation –that is the ways in which poor people exercise voicethrough new forms of inclusion, consultation and/ormobilisation designed to inform and to influence largerinstitutions and policies. On the other hand, growingattention has been paid to how to strengthen theaccountability and responsiveness of these institutions andpolicies through changes in institutional design and afocus on the enabling structures for good governance.Each perspective has often perceived the other asinadequate, with one warning that consultation withoutattention to power and politics will lead to ‘voice withoutinfluence’ and the other arguing that reform of politicalinstitutions without attention to inclusion and consultationwill only reinforce the status quo.

Increasingly, however, we are beginning to see theimportance of working on both sides of the equation. Asconcerns about good governance and stateresponsiveness grow, questions about the capacity ofcitizens to engage and make demands on the state cometo the fore. In both South and North, there is growingconsensus that the way forward is found in a focus onboth a more active and engaged civil society which canexpress demands of the citizenry and a more responsiveand effective state which can secure the delivery ofneeded public services. At the heart of the new consensusof strong state and strong civil society are the need todevelop both participatory democracy and responsivegovernment as ‘mutually reinforcing and supportive’ (TheCommonwealth Foundation, 1999:76, 82).

Re-positioning participationBoth social participation and political participation havecarried with them a distinctive set of methods orapproaches for strengthening or enhancing participation.Traditionally, in the field of political participation, suchmethods have included voter education, enhancing theawareness of rights and responsibilities of citizens,lobbying and advocacy, often aimed towards developing amore informed citizenry who could hold elected

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representatives more accountable. In the social andcommunity spheres, we have seen the development of anumber of broader participatory methods for appraisal,planning, monitoring large institutions, training andawareness building. The emphasis here has been on theimportance of participation not only to hold othersaccountable, but also as a self-development process,starting with the articulation of grassroots needs andpriorities and moving towards the establishment of self-sustaining local organisations.

Figure 1 Linking approaches to participation

bestowing rights and demanding responsibilities of itssubjects. In doing so, they aim to bridge the gap betweencitizen and the state by recasting citizenship as practisedrather than as given. Placing an emphasis on inclusiveparticipation as the very foundation of democraticpractice, these approaches suggest a more active notionof citizenship. This recognises the agency of citizens as‘makers and shapers’ rather than as ‘users and choosers’of interventions or services designed by others (Cornwalland Gaventa 2000). As Lister suggests, ‘the right ofparticipation in decision-making in social, economic,cultural and political life should be included in the nexusof basic human rights… Citizenship as participation canbe seen as representing an expression of human agency inthe political arena, broadly defined; citizenship as rightsenables people to act as agents’ (Lister 1998), (1998:228).

Building on this new thinking about participation, inclusivecitizenship, rights and responsibilities, DFID’s recentstrategy paper Human Rights for Poor People offersimportant new directions for participation in development.Using the more insistent language of ‘obligation’ ratherthan the softer term ‘responsiveness’, it enjoinsgovernments to honour commitments to citizens. Castingparticipation as a human right in itself, it situates the rightto participate as basic to the realisation of other humanrights: ‘Participation in decision-making is central toenabling people to claim their rights. Effectiveparticipation requires that the voices and interests of thepoor are taken into account when decisions are made andthat poor people are empowered to hold policy makersaccountable’ (DFID 2000).

At the same time, there is a growing recognition thatuniversal conceptions of citizenship rights, met through auniform set of social policies, fail to recognise diversityand difference and may in fact serve to strengthen theexclusion of some while seeking inclusion of others(Ellison 1997). With this has come a renewed emphasis oninclusion and on issues of social justice. In all threespheres of political, social and community participation,greater emphasis is now being placed on the involvementof those with least power and voice, with particularattention being paid to measures to address entrenchedgender bias.

New spaces and places for citizenshipparticipationSuch new thinking about citizenship, participation andrights raises the question of how to create newmechanisms, or spaces and places for citizen engagement.It also requires that greater attention is paid to theinterface between citizens and the state, to theintermediaries who play an increasing role in bridging thegap and at processes that can enhance responsibility aswell as responsiveness on all sides.

Citizen participation/ or citizenship

Socialparticipation

Politicalparticipation

Participatorymethods

Engagement in social and community participation hasinevitably brought citizens in closer contact with theinstitutions and processes of governance. Conversely,leaders of projects, programmes and policy researchinitiatives have increasingly sought the voices and versionsof poor people themselves.

Where citizens have been able to take up and use thespaces that participatory processes can open up, they havebeen able to use their agency to demand accountability,transparency and responsiveness from governmentinstitutions. An informed, mobilised citizenry is clearly in abetter position to do so effectively; the capacities builtthrough popular education on rights and responsibilitiesalso extend beyond taking a more active interest in theballot box. Equally importantly, however, wheregovernment agencies have taken an active interest inseeking responsiveness and have not only listened to butacted on citizens’ concerns, otherwise adversarial anddistant relationships have been transformed. Clearly, thisalso holds the promise of electoral advantage. Thesemoves offer new spaces in which the concept ofparticipation can be expanded to one of ‘citizenshipparticipation’, linking participation in the political,community and social spheres (see Figure 1).

New thinking about participation as a right The concept of ‘citizenship’ has long been a disputed andvalue-laden one in democratic theory. New approaches tosocial citizenship seek to move beyond seeing the state as

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One area of innovation has been to extend the traditionalplaces for citizen engagement from the episodic use ofthe ballot box. Conventional spaces such as publicmeetings and committees can be transformed when lentnew powers and responsibilities, as user groups andcitizen councils become actively involved in deliberation.Innovative processes taking place in public spaces wherethe majority of citizens spend their everyday lives involvemore than a self-selecting few, opening up spaces forbroader engagement. The use of PRA for poverty or well-being assessments, for example, offers ways of taking theconsultation process to citizens in their own spaces.Legislative theatre performances draw together policymakers, service commissioners, providers and managerswith community members to engage with the livedrealities of everyday life and explore solutions to real-lifedilemmas.

Another emerging space for the exercise of citizenship hascome with the opening up, and indeed the levering openthrough citizen action, of formerly closed-off decision-making processes. On the one hand, in a number ofcountries enabling national policy has created a newimperative to consult and involve. In Bolivia and Brazil, forexample, participatory municipal planning and budgeting,respectively, have national or state backing. In the UK,central government support for public involvement has ledto a wave of innovation in consultation over a number ofhigh-profile government schemes. The adoption ofparticipatory mechanisms for project and programmeplanning has extended beyond the bounds of discreteinitiatives, in some contexts, to on-going processes ofcitizen involvement in monitoring and evaluation throughwhich citizens play a part not only in offering opinions butalso in holding agencies to account.

On the other hand, the increasing use of participatory anddeliberative processes have contested and begun toreconfigure the boundaries between ‘expertise’ and‘experience’ (Gaventa 1993). As citizens are increasinglyconsidered to have opinions that matter and experiencethat counts, government agencies have involved themmore in the kinds of decisions that were once presentedas technical, rather than acknowledged as value-laden andpolitical. Nowhere is this more the case than in theopening up of public expenditure budgeting to citizenengagement, as has been the case in severalmunicipalities in Brazil. At the local level, a growingemphasis on the co-production and co-management ofservices has also served to create new spaces for citizeninvolvement, as the ‘owners’, and to some extent the‘makers and shapers’, rather than simply ‘users andchoosers’ of services.

In other contexts, pressure placed on governments by civilsociety organisations has forced open spaces throughdemands for responsiveness and accountability. Perhaps

the most notable example of this is the work of MKSS inIndia, whose public hearings on recorded publicexpenditure have named and shamed officials andexposed graft to audiences of thousands of citizens(Goetz 1999). Numerous other examples exist whereNGOs have sought to intermediate between governmentand citizens through the use of participatory mechanismsfor enhanced service responsiveness and accountability;for example in the growing move for citizen involvementin local health service management.

In areas characterised by uncertainty, the use ofmechanisms such as citizens’ juries offers an importantnew dimension: moving beyond eliciting opinions fromcitizens towards a process in which views are aired anddefended, in which contrasting knowledge and versionsare weighed up and interrogated, before ‘judgements’ aresought. These processes offer a valuable corrective to thetendency found in some participatory processes of simplygathering people’s views, rather than providingopportunities for exploration, analysis and debate.

At the same time, citizen involvement in processes wherethe emphasis has been on mutual learning and newcourses of action has helped mould new forms ofconsensus, bridging differences of interest and perspectivewithin communities as well as between communitymembers and statutory or non-statutory agencies. This, inturn, has helped create better mutual understanding andwith it, the prospects for enhancing relationships thatwere previously characterised by mistrust, suspicion anddistance.

Making participation realForms of participation run across a spectrum, fromtokenism and manipulation to devolved power and citizencontrol. As the uses of invited participation to rubberstamp and provide legitimacy for preconceivedinterventions grows, citizens are becoming increasinglysceptical. A recent report by the Commission on Poverty,Participation and Power in the UK for instance warns of‘phoney’ participation, in which power relations do notshift, and in which rhetoric is not reflected in reality.

In this context, making participation real raises a set ofcomplex challenges. A key challenge is buildingconfidence in the willingness of agencies to hear ratherthan simply to listen, nod and do what they were going todo in the first place. Where the use of participatorymethods for consultation has often been most effective iswhere institutional willingness to respond is championedby high-level advocates within organisations. Where such‘champions’ exist and where they can create sufficientmomentum within organisations, the processes of invitedparticipation that they help instigate can make a realdifference.

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New public management strategies emphasise incentivesfor change from within. One important incentive is to be‘championed’ as a model for others to follow, as anexample of good practice. Equally, recognising andrewarding changes in practice can have significant rippleeffects. By creating spaces within bureaucracies in whichresponsiveness is valued, wider changes become possible.

Yet, as we suggest earlier, such changes are only one partof the story. The best-laid plans for public involvement canfalter where citizens express disinterest and where cynicalpublic officials simply go through the motions with no realcommitment to change. Citizen monitoring and otherforms of citizen action can help force some measure ofaccountability. To do so effectively, however, requires alevel of organisation and persistence that is often beyondmany communities who are involved in consultationexercises. Building the preconditions for voice andenabling citizens to actively take up and make use ofavailable spaces for engagement calls for newcombinations of older approaches to social, communityand political participation.

It is in this that some of the most exciting challenges for anew generation of participatory processes reside: in waysof building more deliberation into consultative processes;in participatory rights assessments that enable people torecognise and articulate their rights; and in moves thatturn the tables on processes to gather ‘voices’ to enablepoor people to engage in analysing the policies andinstitutions that affect their lives, as a starting point forchanges that will make a difference.

Andrea Cornwall, Fellow, Institute of DevelopmentStudies (IDS), University of Sussex, Brighton BN19RE, UK. E-mail: a.cornwall@ids.ac.uk

John Gaventa, Fellow, Institute of DevelopmentStudies (IDS), University of Sussex, Brighton BN19RE, UK. E-mail: j.p.gaventa@ids.ac.uk

NotesThis note borrows from material prepared for a projectwith Anne-Marie Goetz, et. al. ‘From Consultation toInfluence: Bringing Citizen Voice and Client Focus intoService Delivery’ (forthcoming).

ReferencesCommonwealth Foundation. (1999). The Way Forward:Citizens, Civil Society and Governance in the newMillennium. London, Commonwealth Foundation.

Cornwall, A., and Gaventa, J. (2000). From users andchoosers to makers and shapers: Repositioningparticipation in social policy. IDS Bulletin 31 (4): pp 50-62.

DFID (2000). Realising human rights for poor people.London, DFID.

Ellison, N. (1997). ‘Beyond Universalism and Particularism:Rethinking contemporary welfare theory’. Critical SocialPolicy 19 (1): pp. 57-83.

Gaventa, J. (1993) ‘The powerful, the powerless and theexperts: knowledge struggles in a information age’ inPeter Park, Budd Hall and Ted Jackson (eds), ParticipatoryResearch in North America, Amherst, MA: Bergin andHadley

Goetz, R. J. and A. M. (1999). Accounts andAccountability: Theoretical Implications for the Right-to-Information Movement in India. StrengtheningParticipation in Local Governance, IDS, Brighton, IDS.

Guijt, I., and Kaul-Shah, M. (eds) (1998). The myth ofcommunity: gender issues in participatory development.London, Intermediate Technology Publications.

Lister, R. (1998). Citizen in Action: Citizenship andcommunity development in Northern Ireland ContextCommunity Development Journal 33(3): 226-235.