Assessing the effectiveness of social accountability interventions in selected district assemblies in Ghana

Abstract

Social accountability interventions have been implemented in low-and middle-income countries as a strategy to improve state-citizen engagement. However, there has been a minimal systematic attempt to document the effectiveness of social accountability initiatives, especially their ability to stimulate accountability actions by citizens. Subsequently, this paper assesses the effectiveness of a social accountability project in Ghana to build the capacity of citizens to participate in state-society engagements and how such engagements resulted in citizens’ actions. Participants were selected from eight Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) in Ghana using a mixed-method approach and a multi-stage sampling procedure involving simple random and purposive sampling techniques. Key informant interviews and Focus Group Discussions were used to collect data from representatives of traditional authorities, media houses and public officers from MMDAs. Structured interviews were used to collect data from 240 participants of the social accountability project to complement the qualitative data. The project was relevant in addressing national efforts to increase citizens’ participation in local governance. Furthermore, the project raised awareness and increased knowledge about participatory principles and platforms for participation among citizens. Overall, the social accountability interventions improve state-citizen engagement. The frequency of citizen-state engagements increased with the project’s inception but did not enhance the responsiveness of the MMDAs to citizens’ demands due to resource constraints and the overreliance on intermediaries to follow up on community issues at the MMDA, thereby failing to translate into agency for collective action. As a result, the paper recommends that social accountability interventions should improve cooperation between public officials and community members around the delivery of specific public services to build trust between them. Furthermore, such interventions should orient public officials to be receptive and responsive to the concerns of community members.

Keywords:

• Capacity building
• citizen-state engagement
• effectiveness
• Ghana
• participation
• social accountability

Reviewing Editor:

• Robert Read, Economics, University of Lancaster, Lancaster, United Kingdom

Subjects:

• Development Studies
• Politics & Development
• Sociology & Social Policy

Introduction

Since the mid-1990s, development approaches have focused on social accountability interventions to empower ordinary citizens to hold governments accountable (Malena et al., 2004). Social accountability initiatives have gained increasing attention owing to their role in improving citizens’ participation in governance and enhancing public service delivery. There is increasing evidence from a number of empirical studies and reviews, especially from developing countries, that social accountability initiatives produced a stronger sense of citizenship and empowerment, leading to voice and accountability (Bennett et al., 2020; Gaventa & Barrett, 2012; Ringold et al., 2012; World Bank, 2013). Scholars and practitioners confirm the contribution of social accountability interventions in strengthening local government capacity to promote transparency and accountability in public service delivery in developing countries (Tembo & Chapman, 2014). In the areas of education, health and social protection, social accountability interventions were predominantly valuable in transforming the relationship between public officials and citizens, leading to improved responsiveness of public officials to the grievances and demands of citizens (Gaventa & Oswald, 2019; Ringold et al., 2012; Shkabatur, 2014). In countries such as India (Pande & Dubbudu, 2017; Swamy, 2020), Mexico (Mendiburu, 2020; Rea, 2019), and Nigeria (Robinson, 2019) opportunities created by legislation to improve governance, resulted in improvements in state-citizen relationships which led to a decline in the mismanagement of public resources, swift response to complaints and grievances, and efficiency of public services (Danhoundo et al., 2018; Joshi, 2013).

Despite the benefits of social accountability interventions, growing evidence points to limitations in effectiveness and impact (Brinkerhoff & Wetterberg, 2016; Fox, 2015; Holland et al., 2009). In many developing countries, projects that emphasise social accountability are gradually losing their appeal due to their failure to improve citizen participation and benefit poorer and more vulnerable people due to elite capture and weak state response (Mansuri & Rao, 2013; Mizrahi & Minchuk, 2019; Tembo, 2013). In a study of four social accountability projects in developing countries, state structures and processes dominated the terms on which citizen input was solicited, which affected citizen participation (Brinkerhoff & Wetterberg, 2016). The authors further noted that active state support for social accountability did not translate into opportunities for citizen empowerment. Similarly, Hickey and King (2016) systematic review of 90 social accountability interventions in developing countries revealed that many projects were unsuccessful due to the failure of these interventions to introduce mechanisms to transform state-society relations. Furthermore, Ringold et al. (2012) assessment of information-based interventions found limited evidence of increased participation for weaker groups due to poor targeting of project beneficiaries, weak alignment of the projective objectives to group needs and limited focus on intra-group poverty, vulnerability, and marginalisation. Another study by GPSA (2014) found evidence that social accountability interventions did not create enabling spaces for state-citizen engagements, leading to poor responsiveness on the part of officials and a decline in citizens’ trust in government.

Studies reveal inconsistencies in the evidence of social accountability interventions (Fox, 2015). A fundamental gap is the state of the evidence of the impact of social accountability initiatives in improving governance and service delivery and the failure to explicitly point out patterns in the evidence. Furthermore, other evaluation reports draw attention to the challenges associated with the application of the approach (Fox, 2015), especially the overemphasis on getting the social accountability tools and the technicalities right at the expense of context. According to Kherigi and Chirchi (2024), the political nature of social accountability interventions makes context relevant in the application of the approach. In addition, other reviews establish that over-relying on the demand-side components of social accountability is insufficient to bring about the needed change in the behaviour of public officials and governance outcomes (Brinkerhoff & Wetterberg, 2016). Ayliffe et al. (2017) and Joshi (2017) argue that social accountability interventions constitute a learning process that takes time to bring about social change. As a result, social accountability interventions should be conceived as a process that requires a more enabling political and legal environment that simultaneously promotes citizen agency and grows capable and receptive state actors (Ringold et al., 2012).

Whilst the evidence of the impact of social accountability interventions suggests some ambivalence, several studies point to the global appeal of the approach in development policy and practice (Khan et al., 2019; Mizrahi & Minchuk, 2019; World Bank, 2013). As a result, many countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa have made social accountability an integral aspect of their development approaches, with many institutionalising it for long-term development. Just as in these countries, Ghana has institutionalised social accountability as part of local government, with the Local Governance Act of 2016 (ACT 936) providing a legal basis for its implementation. The Local Governance Act provides avenues for citizen participation and capacity-building initiatives and introduces complaints and grievance redress mechanisms. In addition, the Act offers spaces for state-citizen engagements and further promotes the inclusion of minority and marginalised groups in local governance. As part of institutionalising social accountability, the Government of Ghana, through the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development (MLGRD), in 2017, commenced the implementation of the Local Government Capacity Support Project (LGCSP) in 17 selected Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs). The project aimed to improve civic participation in governance, especially at subnational levels where the state-society engagement had been historically weak.

These interventions notwithstanding, the evidence of the impact of social accountability interventions remains inconclusive (Ayliffe et al., 2017; Fox, 2015; Joshi, 2013), and there are few studies in Ghana. In this regard, the current article assesses the effectiveness of social accountability initiatives in some selected Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies in Ghana. The following questions guided the study: What roles do capacity-building programmes play in social accountability initiatives? How do social accountability initiatives contribute to state-society engagements? Finally, how does participation in citizen-state engagements translate into citizens’ voices and actions? The findings of this study contribute more widely to debates on the effectiveness of social accountability in enhancing governance practices, particularly in the Ghanaian context. In this study, we focus on the possibilities of social accountability through capacity building to improve citizens’ awareness of their rights and entitlements. By highlighting the successes, challenges, and areas for improvement, the study can inform policymakers, civil society organisations, and other stakeholders about strategies to enhance the effectiveness of social accountability interventions. Ultimately, the study’s significance lies in its potential to foster greater transparency, accountability, and citizen engagement within Ghana’s governance structures, thereby contributing to more inclusive and responsive governance processes.

Review of related literature

Considering the centrality of accountability in social accountability discourse, it is relevant to commence the review with a brief explanation of accountability. According to Kuppens (2016), accountability refers to the processes, norms, and structures that require public officials or state-actors to answer for their actions to another actor (the governed) and undergo some level of sanctions if the performance is below the acceptable standard. Using institutional theory perspectives, accountability is conceived of as a relational concept between two key actors, namely the principal and the agent, in which one is accountable to the other (Goetz & Jenkins, 2005). Most often, the targets of accountability are the agents, the duty bearers, who are obliged to account for their actions and to face sanctions, while the seekers of accountability, the principals, are those entitled to explanations, that is, the citizens.

One weakness of the principal-agent notion of accountability is the multiple hierarchical levels of delegation, which insulates state-actors from being entirely held responsible for performance (Molyneux et al., 2012). State-actors at the lower levels of the hierarchy have some discretion that the principal cannot control. The problem is alarming in areas with weak or non-existent government-led or regulatory monitoring mechanisms (Croke, 2012). This becomes complex when political and governmental officials, including public service providers, have little incentive to induce behavioural change (Joshi, 2013). According to Friis-Hansen and Ravnkilde (2013), these factors render accountability mechanisms weak and ineffective in checking corrupt public officials and poor service delivery. On the part of the poor and marginalised who need accountability the most, such bureaucratic accountability mechanism failures lead to poor responsiveness from the government (World Bank, 2004).

In response, social accountability initiatives are introduced to connect citizens directly to public officials (Croke, 2012; World Bank, 2004). Social accountability initiatives are demand-driven and focus on citizens and their actions. According to Malena et al. (2004:3), “social accountability can be defined as an approach towards building accountability that relies on civic engagement”. Within this broad definition is the idea that social accountability is citizen-led and social in nature. This definition considers social accountability approaches as a form of participatory governance mechanisms that seek to facilitate the participation of ordinary citizens in the public policy process. Within this perspective, social accountability interventions focus more on the “interaction and relationship” between citizens or their representatives on the one hand and state-actors and service providers on the other (Friis-Hansen & Ravnkilde, 2013: 22). Other writers like Claasen et al. (2010), state that social accountability is about how citizens can demand and enforce accountability from power holders.

A review of the literature on social accountability reveals that the approach aligns with the principles of participatory governance (Gaventa & Oswald, 2019). According to Malena et al. (2004), social accountability initiatives are implemented with increased participation and improved accountability and transparency standards as an end goal. For others, social accountability improves the quality of governance, increases development effectiveness and enhances citizen’s empowerment (Malena et al., 2004; World Bank, 2004). As a way of improving the quality of governance, social accountability initiatives focus on transforming the nature of engagements between citizens and state-actors by deepening the involvement of the latter to strengthen the transparency and integrity of public institutions and actors (Gaventa & McGee, 2013). Thus, social accountability interventions provide the means through which marginalised and disadvantaged people in society can express their voice, claim rights, shape the nature of state-citizen engagement, and alter the nature of existing power relations (O’Meally, 2013; World Bank, 2004).

The underlying assumption is that social accountability initiatives will generate action by citizens to demand accountability from power holders (Joshi & Houtzager, 2012; O’Meally, 2013; Tembo & Chapman, 2014; World Bank, 2013). In other instances, social accountability interventions aim to improve citizens’ participation in governance and, at the same time, strengthen state-actors’ responsiveness to ordinary people’s concerns. This works on a principle that has two main components. First, citizens need to be informed, mobilised, and enabled to adequately engage with public officials. Secondly, public officials need incentives, information, authority, and the capacity to be responsive (Ayliffe et al., 2017). With this principle, citizens and state actors can engage to improve governance, enhance service delivery and promote development (World Bank, 2013).

Two main types of social accountability initiatives are dominant in the literature: the transparency initiatives and the rights-based and participatory governance initiatives (Hickey & King, 2016). However, Vloeberghs and Bergh (2021) see some overlaps between these two categories, with many social accountability initiatives developed with a multidimensional approach. Transparency accountability initiatives consider transparent and accurate information central to social accountability initiatives. With this strand, the focus is on increasing citizen access to information about their entitlements and rights and providing information about the various stages of the budget process. The underlying idea is to provide citizens with information and empower them to use this information to follow up on government expenditures and assess public services.

The second type merges ideas about rights and participatory governance (Gaventa & McGee, 2013). The combination of the rights-based model and participatory governance approach in social accountability interventions dwells on the idea of democratic engagement (Fischer, 2010), which seeks to build the capacity of citizens to know and claim their rights and further draw on these rights to shape decision-making processes (Cleaver, 2012; Cornwall & Coelho, 2007). The focus on rights is to advocate participation as a fundamental right and, in doing so, consider citizens neither as passive beneficiaries nor consumers but as agents who can make and shape development (Cornwall, 2004). Malena (2009) states that empowering marginal people to participate in decision-making is critical to participatory governance approaches. Participatory governance encompasses the principle of citizens’ rights (Fischer, 2003) and focuses on empowering citizens to influence and share control in processes of public decision-making that affects their lives (Malena et al., 2004). The potential for participatory governance is greatest at the local level where citizens can directly engage with public officials on issues that are relevant to their lives. Participatory governance approaches focus on transforming the relationship between citizens and duty-bearers through public engagements to build relationships based on trust and reciprocity. For this to happen, citizens should be empowered to clearly understand their rights and entitlements and the specific obligations that public officers have to fulfil in their work (Björkman & Svensson, 2010; Camargo & Jacobs, 2013).

The building of citizens’ knowledge of rights and information sharing is expected to translate into individual or collective outcomes (Banks, 2019; Camargo & Jacobs, 2013; McNeil & Malena, 2010). However, studies on the impact of social accountability interventions have drawn attention to the increasing use of the concept within an efficiency paradigm with limited emphasis on power and politics (Gaventa & McGee, 2013). Social accountability interventions are widely seen as over-emphasising the application of tools at the expense of empowering citizens to exercise rights within their socio-political reality (Joshi, 2014). According to Friis-Hansen and Ravnkilde (2013), the exercise of rights in practice may be challenging in a context where citizens do not have the capacity to engage duty-bearers adequately based on rights. Tembo (2013) argues that awareness of rights and entitlements alongside capacity building is insufficient for citizens to exercise agency due to the complex web of interest and incentives that shape their motivation to act. Individuals ‘ economic, political, and social formation and location within the social structure inform the decision to act or to do otherwise (Cleaver, 2012).

Participation and social accountability

The civic nature of social accountability initiatives puts citizen participation at the heart of the approach (Malena et al., 2004). Participation as a concept has been defined and applied differently in the development literature. The World Bank (1994) describes participation as a process that allows different stakeholders to influence and share control over decisions and resources about development interventions. Regarding the stakeholders, Guijt and Shah (1998) recommend that the focus of participation must be on those whose lives are most affected by the participatory process, especially the poor and marginalised. With this in mind, Guijt and Shah (1998:1) consider participation as the process of involving “socially and economically marginalised people in decision-making over their own lives”. Brett (2003) extends this definition further by including the approaches and processes that empower ordinary people to manage their affairs and control resources.

Participatory governance literature is beleaguered with various approaches to participation, from those that focus on the participation of ordinary people as a right (Chambers, 1997) to those seeking to integrate participation into projects (Chigova & Hofisi, 2021). Both participation strands are visible in the social accountability literature (Malena et al., 2004). An instrumental notion of participation holds that participation enhances the inclusion of the views of ordinary people in the decision-making process, leading to effective and efficient implementation of policies (Bulkeley & Mol, 2003). This form of participation entails bringing in people who are excluded from participation into decision-making processes. On the other hand, the normative notion of participation emphasises using democratic values such as citizenship and obligation to promote a more inclusive and deliberative form of decision-making (Fischer, 2003; Zandbergen & Jaffe, 2014). Such a view of participation presupposes that the required legal rights and obligations are in place to allow citizens to participate in ways that influence decisions that affect their lives. In this way, ordinary citizens, especially women, poor people, and other marginalised groups, exercise citizenship as a form of agency that shapes the outcomes of the governance processes.

Several problems and challenges are associated with participatory governance approaches (Eckerd & Heidelberg, 2020; Malemane & Nel-Sanders, 2021). A fundamental limitation is the application of participation in a more technical sense, emphasising efficiency in the form of project-dictated deliverables (Cleaver, 1999; Cornwall, 2004; Sinwell, 2023). The problem with participation is further compounded by limited awareness of rights on the part of citizens (Cornwall, 2004). Another related problem is the tendency of people advantaged by political, economic, or social circumstances to shape policies and public actions in their favour unduly (Kosack & Fung, 2014). In practice, people are unequally positioned in the social system with different human capital or capabilities to participate. The multiple realities and diverse social practices of actors may account for differing levels of participation in social accountability interventions. For example, while participatory interventions privilege public spaces for interaction, there may be other non-formalised spaces where decision-making occurs (Anyidoho, 2010). Yet, such non-formal interaction spaces are not considered in social accountability initiatives.

The centrality of participation in social accountability interventions raises concerns about the unequal power relations between public officials and citizens. Cleaver (1999, 2001) elaborated on this position by arguing that the neglect of power-relations in participatory approaches has made the concept lose its radical edge. This is due to the fact that participation is naively presented in ways that suggest that the multiple actors that converge to deliberate on issues do so on a level playing field. Such a notion obscures the inequalities of resources and power among the different actors that interact in the spaces created for engagement. For example, participation is expected to result in open and meaningful dialogue among different actors, such as community elites, public officials, and ordinary people. Yet, the engagement ensuing among these actors is ladened with power and patterned by attitude and behaviour, which affect the agency of the ordinary people in these spaces. A focus on power relations in participatory spaces from the side of ordinary people will reveal what is possible within them, who may enter, and with which identities, discourse, and interests (Gaventa & Barret, 2012). Thus, participatory approaches inadequately focus on the existing power relations in which ordinary people are embedded and how these relations affect their ability to influence the decisions that affect their lives and livelihoods (Allegretti, 2021).

Notably, social accountability interventions alleviate the challenges of participation, especially power relations, by creating spaces for participation and strengthening the process of citizen-state engagement. This requires working on both sides of the equation to develop new relationships between ordinary people and public officials (Gaventa & Barret, 2012). Hordijk (2005) suggests that social accountability initiatives should focus on building a synergistic relationship between the state and civil society in local governance. Subsequently, Ayliffe et al. (2017) propose that social accountability should be grounded in local analysis to identify the constraints and enablements of participation by citizens and public officials. Such an analysis must consider the existing power relations between citizens and public officials. On the part of citizens, efforts to promote social accountability should focus on building their capacity and equipping them with knowledge about their rights. Such knowledge about rights will help in developing a sense of entitlement to participate among citizens, which is expected to translate into citizen action (Barr et al., 2012). Citizen action will occur when the anticipated benefits of action exceed costs and risks and when there is no fear of reprisals from state actors and group members. In addition, social accountability interventions will achieve positive outcomes when state actors take positive actions on their concerns and elite capture is avoided. On the other hand, public officials are important to the success of social accountability initiatives because they interface with citizens and further design and implement public policies (Baldwin, 2020). As a result, public officials are expected to have the incentives to engage citizens and address their concerns to enhance state responsiveness and accountability.

Methodology

The study uses a concurrent mixed-methods approach, with the qualitative method being the dominant approach. The mixed method approach was considered appropriate for this study because social accountability interventions are complex and should be assessed using multiple approaches (Bamberger, 2000). In this study, the mixed methods approach allowed for assessing the quality and extent of the evidence of social accountability and how this resulted in collaborative partnerships between citizens and state officials. The qualitative approach enabled the team to understand the nature and outcome of citizens-state engagements, while the quantitative aspect focused on the frequency of interactions and how they differed across various study sites. The study design was cross-sectional, as the data collection from different categories of participants was undertaken over a relatively short time.

A multi-stage sampling approach was used to select the districts and participants for the study. The first stage involved the selection of the MMDAs. Eight MMDAs were selected out of 17 that participated in the social accountability project. This forms about 47 percent of the MMDAs that participated in the social accountability programme, meeting Hertzog’s (2008) criterion of 25 percent or more of a given population as representative. The eight MMDAs were selected to cover for the variations in the designations of the participating assemblies. The MMDAs were first stratified into metropolitan, municipal and district, and the sample of eight was proportionately distributed across the MMDAs. The limitation of this approach lies in population truncation as the MMDAs were unique in terms of their organisation of the town hall meetings and procedures of engagement with participants, which could affect the generalisability of the findings. In order to overcome this limitation, we made sure that the selected MMDAs covered nearly fifty percent of the total participating MMDAs to capture all the characteristics of the population. There was also geographical and urbanity representation across the country of the MMDAs selected. This approach is considered adequate for capturing all the characteristics of the population as well as the descriptive components of the data, thereby allowing for the generalisation of findings (Fox et al., 2007). In all, two metropolitan assemblies (Accra and Tamale), four municipal assemblies (Ahanta West, Birim Central, Effutu, and Kintampo) and two districts (Bosome Freho and Dormaa West) were selected.

The second stage started with selecting the participants for the town hall meetings. In each selected MMDA, the facilitating CSO presented the list of participants for the town hall meeting, which served as the sampling frame for the selection of citizens in the project communities. The mean number of participants in each town hall meeting was 100. Thirty respondents from each town hall meeting in the eight MMDAs were selected using a simple random sampling procedure to eliminate selection biases. Out of the 800 participants, 240 were sampled for the survey. The sample forms 30 percent of the total participants, which, according to Hertzog (2008), is representative of the target population.

For the qualitative data, purposive sampling was used to select key informants, including those from state institutions and civil society, in each study site. The key informants were the Local Implementation CSO, the District Chief Executive (DCE), the traditional leaders and the media partner(s) of the social accountability project in each selected district. The qualitative data were collected through Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) and Key Informant Interviews (KIIs). The purpose of the FGDs was to gather information from different categories of state and non-state-actors about capacity building, the nature of citizen-state engagements and the experiences with participation. The state-actors comprised the District Coordinating Director, District Development Planning Officer, District Social Development Officer, Budget Analyst, District Finance Officer, and District Presiding Officer. There were seven participants for each FGD involving state actors. Each non-state-actors’ FGD involved a Traditional Leader, an Islamic Leader, a President of the Local Council of Churches, an Assembly Member, a President of the People Living with Disability Group, a Leader of the Traders Association, a Leader of the Market Women and the President of the Hairdresser and Tailors Association. These participants were adults above eighteen years old and had lived in the community for over three years. In each selected district, two FGDs of between eight and 11 people were organised, one each for state and non-state-actors. The state-actors were public officials working with the MMDAs who participated in the capacity-building training workshops. The duration for each FGD varied from 60 to 90 minutes. In addition to the FGDs, thirty-two face-to-face key informant interviews were conducted. For both the KII and FGDs, pre-determined themes identified during the literature review guided decisions about data saturation. The themes relate to sub-categories that focus on capacity building and information campaigns about rights, the character of state-civil society engagements, including relationship dynamics and the influence of these engagements on citizen action and voice.

With respect to the quantitative data, a questionnaire was used to collect information on the background characteristics of the respondents, the awareness campaign and capacity building, the nature of citizen-state engagement and the level of participation and voice. Informed consent was obtained from all study respondents before they were interviewed. Information on the informed consent form was read to the selected participants by the research assistants, and those who consented to participate in the study were asked to sign or thumbprint the form, indicating their willingness to respond to the survey. One researcher coded the qualitative data to ensure consistency in the coding. Furthermore, the qualitative data was analysed using the narrative approach and further complemented with thematic analysis. On the other hand, the quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics such as frequency and percentages.

Results and discussion

This section of the paper focuses on the presentation and discussion of the field data based on the study’s objectives. The discussion begins with the background information of the survey respondents, followed by the outcome of the capacity-building activities and the utilisation of the information for engagement with state-actors. The final section discusses the outcome of the interactions between state and non-state-actors and how such engagements translated into citizen action.

Background information of respondents

The study considered the characteristics of respondents, namely sex, age, and education. With respect to sex, the majority (85.8%) of the 240 respondents were males, while the rest were females. This indicates that the social accountability initiative was male dominated in all eight of the studied MMDAs. This finding confirms Bradshaw et al. (2016) position that women tend to be excluded from the processes aimed at building and encouraging active citizenship. Another key factor that informed the pattern of participation in the social accountability interventions is age, with those between 21 and 60 years dominating the sample (55%). The remaining respondents were below 20 years (5.8%) or above 60 years (39.2%). Regarding educational level, most (54%) of the respondents had secondary education, with a little over a quarter having tertiary education. The rest had primary education.

The youth and women were engaged in various activities, which affected their ability to participate in the social accountability intervention. Thus, community leaders in influential positions are men from the upper-middle well-being classification with at least a secondary education and have been in employment outside the community. This finding re-echoes Mdee’s (2008) position that individual participation in participatory governance approaches is differentiated along factors such as age, gender and wealth. Furthermore, studies undertaken by Allegretti (2021) and Anyidoho (2010) point to the difficulties in enrolling the underrepresented and less resourced to participate fully in participatory initiatives.

Capacity building

Social accountability outcomes depend on the availability of information, awareness and knowledge about rights and entitlements (Ayliffe et al., 2017; Bandyopadhyay & Vaishnava, 2013; Bradshaw et al., 2016). The underlying argument is that empowering citizens with information, ways to communicate effectively, and access to decision-makers will change the role of communities in local governance.

The capacity-building activities organised under the project focused on raising awareness of the rights and entitlements of communities and the mode of participation as indicated in the Local Governance Act of 2016 (Act 936). Information on the Public Financial Management Framework for MMDAs was also provided. According to a key informant from the implementing CSO in Effutu, the capacity building activities in the selected MMDAs were done to build the capacity of citizens, media personnel and the staff of the participating MMDAs. The training on the Local Governance Act, 936 and other selected policies equipped the participants with the knowledge to engage with state-actors adequately. The information provided during the capacity-building programmes falls under actionable information (Fox, 2015; Kosack & Fung, 2014) because it equipped citizens with the knowledge to generate action for responsiveness.

Furthermore, training the MMDA staff to develop their capacities on social accountability tools was an excellent approach to gaining the buy-in of public officials. During the FGDs with the staff of the MMDAs, they indicated the usefulness of the capacity-building workshop in enhancing their knowledge about participatory governance, especially social accountability. At the same time, the training programmes made the MMDA officials increasingly aware of their role in involving community members in the planning process and following up on their problems. This approach corresponds with findings that suggest that successful social accountability interventions not only provided citizens with critical information on their rights and obligations but also trained duty-bearers to strengthen local government capacity (Fox, 2015; Keefer & Khemani, 2012; Tembo, 2013).

The knowledge of the non-state-actors who participated in capacity-building training on the concept of social accountability and the Local Governance Act, Act 936, was examined to measure the relevance of the information provided. Generally, the non-state-actors demonstrated a good understanding of the concept of social accountability with some linking it to the issues in the Local Governance Act, Act 936. A community leader in Kintampo summarised social accountability as follows:

“social accountability basically exists when there is a strong voice for leaders in the community and the municipal assembly to explain issues to community members. It must come from the community. It is initiated by citizens.”

The narrative above points out three key issues in relation to social accountability. First is the emphasis on community members and citizens initiating the process. This relates to citizens identifying themselves as right-bearers and having the capacity to call on leaders to provide explanations for their actions. Secondly, using the phrase, strong voice, shows the need for active participation to get public officials responsive. Finally, using the word explain connotes some degree of engagement between public officials and community leaders to clarify issues. The summary of social accountability provided in the narrative resonates with definitions by Malena et al. (2004), O’Meally (2013) and World Bank (2004).

In most FGDs with non-state-actors, common phrases on the meaning of social accountability include reporting to us, providing information, responding, giving feedback on community problems, and being open about assembly issues. All these responses connote multiple meanings to the idea of social accountability. Some of the non-state-actors demonstrated awareness about the right of stakeholders to petition, district assembly communication, and access to information, as stated in Sections 43, 46, and 47 of the Local Governance Act, 2016 (Act 936), respectively. Despite the multiple meanings associated with social accountability, the dominant response among interviewees was giving citizens an account of the use of public funds. The awareness created under the project through the capacity building of state and non-state actors reinforces Gaventa and McGee (2013) position that awareness about the legal framework and policy documents is an important entry point towards increasing social accountability, especially if it reaches the intended audiences. For Fox (2015), information creates a solid base for dialogue and negotiation in the social accountability process.

In line with the objectives of the project, the non-state-actors were informed of their rights as enshrined in Sections 40 and 41 of the Local Governance Act (Act 963) of 2016. According to the non-state actors, they were aware that the MMDAs had to engage them to elicit their input before the commencement of any project. Key informants from the Birim Central District and the Kintampo Municipal Assembly mentioned that they have been sensitised on the right to participate in their respective assemblies’ budget and planning activities. Contrary to the initial project baseline documents that showed citizens’ disinterest in local governance activities and low knowledge about the activities of the MMDAS, the FGDs revealed a high level of awareness about the Local Governance Act, Act 936. The participants in the FGDs could mention at least three modalities or platforms for participation. These were Town hall meetings, community durbars, budget preparation and validation fora and the use of notice boards. The use of information communication technology-based platforms and visits to development project sites, which are all part of the modalities for participation under the Local Governance Act (Act 963) of 2017, did not generally feature in the responses during the FGDs. Thus, empowering community members with information about their rights and obligations fits well with the ideals of participatory governance where citizens are empowered to influence and share control in public decision-making processes that affect their lives (Malena et al., 2012).

On the inclusion and integration of minorities and marginalised groups, the interviews with the respondents from the PWD groups revealed that the capacity building programme had provided them with actionable information on the District Assembly Common Fund (DACF) and the mode of disbursement for the disability fund. In one of the study sites, the PWD respondent hinted at neglect in the past by the District Assembly, but the awareness campaign on the disability fund component of the DACF had given them the opportunity to get some support from the state. The information provided to the PWDs, who are usually poorer and more vulnerable than the average citizen, incentivised them to demand their share of the DACF without fear of retaliation from the MMDA staff (see Ayliffe et al., 2017). In addition, the engagement between the PWDs and the District Social Development Officer resulted in building trust between the two. One theme running through the interviews with PWD groups is the central role of the District Social Development Officer in supporting them in accessing their funds. According to a PWD respondent from Dormaa, the

“social welfare madam understands our situation. She follows up on the allocation and the disbursement of the funds and counsels us on the utilisation of the money given to us.”

The above narrative re-emphasises the numerous actions that public officials can undertake to promote change through social accountability. In this particular case, the District Social Development Officer opened up to the members of the PWD group, leading to effective interactions and positive outcomes in the utilisation of the monies allocated. Again, the interest of the District Social Development Officer to provide information on the disability fund components of the DACF shows that the capacity and willingness of state actors to engage is critical to achieving successful social accountability outcomes (Joshi & Houtzager, 2012).

The findings in this section are similar to studies by Lieberman et al. (2014) that point to the salience of learning and capacity building through information sharing and awareness creation in social accountability interventions. The findings also reinforce a point made in the social accountability literature that capacity-building activities that involve citizens, state-actors and other non-state-actors will result in knowledge acquisition and relationship-building that are relevant for state-citizen engagements (Nguyahambi & Chang’a, 2019). In Guinea, the Faisons Ensemble project provided capacity building on literacy and awareness of rights and responsibilities, which enabled citizens to engage effectively with local officials and service providers (Gaventa & Barrett, 2012).

State-citizen engagements and participation

This section of the results considers state-citizen engagement arising from the capacity-building programmes. The vehicle for state-citizen engagement in the decentralisation process in Ghana is the Town Hall meetings, stipulated under Section 42 (a) of the Local Governance Act (Act 936) of 2016. Key informants from the MMDAs noted that Town Hall meetings could not be held in the past due to resource constraints on the part of the MMDAs. Findings from the study further revealed that three of the eight sampled MMDAs had not undertaken more than two Town Hall meetings in the year before the project’s inception. However, with the inception of the social accountability project, five community durbars and two Town Hall meetings were held in each district at the time of the study. This was further confirmed in documented evidence from project reports of the participating MMDAs.

The study findings show that CSOs supported and engaged with MMDAs to promote social accountability initiatives. State-citizen engagements in all the study sites became more vibrant due to the intermediary role of the sponsoring CSOs. The intermediary roles of the CSOs were considered essential for organising citizens and getting them into participatory spaces conducive to citizen-state engagements. The combination of different engagement strategies draws on the rights-based model and participatory governance approaches in social accountability interventions (Fischer, 2003), which seeks to build the capacity of citizens, empowering them to exercise their rights in the decision-making processes (Cleaver, 2012; Cornwall & Coelho, 2007).

During a KII with a CSO staff member, it was apparent that the CSOs had to sustain the project’s momentum by following up with the MMDAs on the project. According to Greijn et al. (2015), CSOs have played successful intermediary roles in social accountability initiatives due to their ability to effectively tackle public officials’ apathy, suspicion, and apprehension. In this way, CSOs are able to bring about changes to the behaviour of public officials.

However, the KII with the state-actors revealed a weak coherence between the legalisation of the platforms for citizen participation and the sustainability of these platforms for citizen-state engagement. It was evident in the discussions with the MMDA officials that the spaces for engagement, though critical for the success of social accountability initiatives, might not be sustainable due to limited funding and inadequate logistics from the state or the district assemblies. This confirms the position of Brinkerhoff and Wetterberg (2016) that the growth and sustainability of citizens-state engagement are affected when social accountability initiatives become donor-dependent.

The study found the institutionalisation of Town Hall meetings and other public forums by the MLGRD through the Local Governance Act, Act 936, to be a valuable platform for explaining issues and receiving feedback from local government officers. Key informants noted that Town Hall meetings were organised for two main reasons. First, to discuss community problems and, secondly, to share information on the Assembly’s expenditure using the public financial management templates. For example, in the Ahanta West, multiple actors, including the citizens, District Assembly officials, service providers and service users, met at Town Hall meetings to discuss community developmental issues. Also, in the Dormaa West District, the initial design for constructing a new market centre was changed due to the continuous engagement between the community and state officials. In Kintampo, the addition of a ceiling to the roofing of a school building project was because of engagements with district assembly officials. The examples reveal that the provision of legal instruments can re-orient public officials to be open to citizen input due to their value on community engagement. This finding is consistent with studies that show that citizen-state engagements with receptive duty-bearers can lead to positive outcomes (Fox, 2015; Tembo, 2013). Furthermore, this finding supports the evidence that social accountability initiatives achieve some meaningful impact when the legal frameworks and incentive structures within which state actors operate provide a political environment that enhances citizen participation (Gaventa & McGee, 2013; Joshi, 2017).

Furthermore, the study recognises the contribution of notable public officials in facilitating successful social accountability interventions. This is captured in the narratives of a District Chief Executive who mentioned that his participation in the capacity building programme under the social accountability project generated interest in citizen-state engagement, resulting in the use of town hall meetings to generate awareness about the activities of the district assembly. He stressed that:

As a District Chief Executive, I supported the process of providing information on the assembly. Initially, I thought that community engagement would be very expensive, and so, as an assembly, we did not put a premium on that approach as a means of consulting citizens. However, when I participated in the capacity-building training, I noticed that, in line with the law, citizens needed information about the activities of the assembly. I decided to have more engagements in the various communities under the district. The assembly developed an activity plan for all the electoral areas to organise electoral area meetings and interact with community members. These open sessions on the assembly’s projects and the budget provided information on the annual income and expenditure statements of the assembly by displaying the projects undertaken by the assembly and the associated expenditures. This gave community members opportunities to review the budget and ask about different income and expenditure items. They also mentioned their community problems.

The narrative above shows that the presence of the DCEs to listen to the community’s problems and tell them about the finances of the assembly enhanced their interest in the project. In addition, such spaces allow public officials to build relationships with community members to showcase the development projects implemented and receive feedback on problems within the community. In the Ahanta West, a community leader said:

Every year, the staff of the assembly or their representatives come to discuss the problems in the community with us and to inform us of the actions taken on those problems reported in the previous year. The community members who attend ask questions on the projects implemented by the assembly. At times, the explanations given to us do not meet our expectations since the problems reported have not been resolved.

The results underscore the relevance of more capable and receptive public officials in social accountability interventions. Malena et al. (2012) refers to such state-actors as “Champions inside the system who are institutionalised with teeth” and are willing and capable of supporting social accountability initiatives to succeed. According to Brinkerhoff and Wetterberg (2016), social accountability interventions generally lead to positive outcomes when powerful public officials engage with ordinary citizens and are open to the latter’s input. In contrast, the presence of state officials in the community to explain issues did not mean that they were more willing or had the capacity to respond to the problems mentioned (Ayliffe et al., 2017).

The FGDs with non-state-actors revealed that the social accountability project facilitated dialogue between officials from the MMDAs and community members. Project reports revealed that MMDAs such as Birim Central, Kintampo, Bosome Freho and Dormaa West had organised an average of three meetings to engage with community members to explain issues to them, which hitherto was not the case. It must be emphasised that the role of the MMDA staff was critical in the organisation of these meetings as they saw value in them. These community durbars enabled the community members to seek answers to community concerns. Even though the community members could not contest the information provided by the public officials, they considered the information very useful. As indicated by a respondent, “the fact that they came here shows respect and recognition on the part of the assembly”. This finding re-echoes Fox’s (2015) idea that social accountability interventions need some form of vertical accountability that enables public officers to explain their performance to citizens in utilising public resources. Also, such spaces are essential as they initiate the process of information sharing and feedback, which allows citizens to demand explanations from public officials (Lührmann et al., 2020).

Another interesting finding from the study is the observation of changes in the behaviour of the MMDA staff by community members. During the FGDs with the PWD group, they indicated that some of the MMDA staff had become receptive, leading to a cordial relationship between them and the assembly. This impression was generally mentioned in the KIIs that citizens could now easily access local government representatives to either report problems or request clarification on MMDA decisions. In a KII, it was revealed that “citizens have become calm and less aggressive to the DA as a result of constant interaction.” Such positive changes in relations between state and non-state-actors are essential for social accountability interventions. According to Joshi (2017) successful social accountability interventions build collaborative partnerships by re-aligning the power relations between citizens and state-actors.

Citizen voice and responsiveness

In this study, voice was measured in terms of first, the ability to express one’s views about a concern or community need and second, the efforts by public officials to respond to such demands (Banks, 2019). Generally, the data provides examples of community members expressing their views on issues and making demands on their district assemblies. The survey respondents affirmed that community members could now speak about their problems during town hall meetings or community durbars (64%), with 58 percent stating that they have personally asked questions or made their concerns known during these meetings. Nearly 53 percent had contacted their local government representative on an issue in the past year, while the remaining did not contact their local government representative because they thought that nothing would come out of such interactions. On the other hand, 68 percent of the respondents indicated that information on assembly issues was provided during community engagements.

The FGDs confirmed that information provision by MMDA staff during community engagements enabled the participants to seek clarity about local government decisions and voice their concerns about community problems. Participants in all the FGDs agreed that this initiative was good as it allowed community members to participate in decision-making. This finding is consistent with studies on social accountability that demonstrate that access to information and constructive citizen-state relations improve citizen participation (Lieberman et al., 2014; Ringold et al., 2012).

In terms of satisfaction with the responses from the state-actors, 33 percent of the survey respondents stated that they were satisfied with the answers given by the local government officials. Compared to the other study sites, respondents from Dormaa West (61%) and Ahanta West (67%) reported a high rate of satisfaction, which may be explained by the involvement of the Chief Executives in the community engagements. About 48 percent stated that the inception of the social accountability project in their districts had resulted in the provision of information on assembly issues through radio shows, openness on assembly activities and decisions, and community visits by local government officials. In general, the citizens’ level of satisfaction with the responsiveness of MMDA to their concerns or problems was moderate, with only 34 percent indicating that they were satisfied. This questions the power of information and capacity-building activities to result in citizens’ actions and follow-up by public officials (Fox, 2015).

Evidence from the study revealed that the social accountability project had empowered the PWDs and effectively brought about transparency and accountability in the management of the Disability Fund component of the District Assembly Common Fund (DACF). According to the PWDs, the training program created awareness and information on the Disability Fund. In a KII with a leader of the PWD, it was revealed that the training programmes and awareness campaign had resulted in “improvements in the frequency and quality of engagements with the officials working at the social welfare unit of the district assemblies”. These engagements provided more information on the percentage of the DACF that should be given to the PWDs and the formula for sharing the accumulated funds. For example, one member of the Ghana Federation for the Blind stated:

Now, the DCE has been calling the executive of the Ghana Federation for the Deaf to give us information on the DACF. Hitherto, they would not even listen to us and would only tell us to go and come, but for now, there is a massive improvement. We are aware we receive 2.5 percent of the DACF, and this is shared among the different PWD groups. We have a bank account, and deposits and payments are all known to members.

Another member of the PWD group had this to say:

Some areas of the assembly are not disability-friendly, and I complained to the social welfare and the coordinating director about it. Any time I visit the assembly, I have to be carried into the building. Recently, I attended a training workshop at the assembly, and they have constructed a disability-friendly way for us to access the Assembly Hall.

The narratives above show that the capacity-building activities have yielded some impact. The changes observed by the respondents can be explained by the fact that after the workshop, the two actors had cultivated a collaborative relationship around an issue and used the relationship to resolve a long-standing problem. In this example, the issue of voice and action is demonstrated through the actors’ desire to collaborate to resolve the problem (Tembo, 2013). This finding points to the relevance of what Fox (2000: 2) refers to as “pro-accountability outcomes that often depend on mutually reinforcing interactions between state and non-state-actors.” Thus, over-relying on demand-driven social accountability is inadequate due to the need to draw on state actors’ capacity to engage citizens and be receptive to their concerns. These findings confirm Joshi’s (2014) position that aligning demand and supply sides factors in social accountability interventions can produce mutually reinforcing outcomes. The finding further underscores the institutional theory’s standpoint on social accountability, stressing the importance of a symbiotic relationship between state institutions (principal) and agents (citizens) in which the principal is accountable to the agent and vice versa (Goetz & Jenkins, 2005).

Conclusion and policy recommendations

Overall, the social accountability interventions improve state-citizen engagement. The frequency of citizen-state engagements increased with the project’s inception but did not enhance the responsiveness of the MMDAs to citizens’ demands due to resource constraints and the overreliance on intermediaries to follow up on community issues at the MMDA, thereby failing to translate into agency for collective action. In line with the assumptions of social accountability interventions, awareness generation through information campaigns creates interest among state and non-state actors. The information campaigns undertaken during the inception of social accountability interventions equip non-state actors with actionable knowledge of citizen rights and entitlements, responsibilities, participation platforms, communication, and grievance mechanisms of the MMDAs, which enhance citizen-state engagement. In addition, capacity-building programmes, together with face-to-face interfaces such as town hall meetings and public durbars, as well as using key community members as liaisons between MMDAS and communities, generate citizens’ interest and promote participation. Social accountability interventions also empower citizens to engage with public officials at MMDAs effectively. It advances citizens’ voices and actions through the expression of views during community engagements.

In terms of policy implications of the findings, the study has shown that promoting citizen action through social accountability interventions may not be sufficient in achieving citizen participation. As a result, better insights are needed on the conditions under which voice interacts positively with responsiveness. Adopting a learning approach that focuses on longer-term investment in the capacity building of state-actors to be receptive and capable of action is likely to prompt government response to citizen demands. The paper further recommends that MMDAs, during the implementation of social accountability interventions, should use the delivery of public services to foster the participation of citizens in community activities and, through that, enhance the level of cooperation between public officials and community members. This is to build trust between citizens and public officials and further build the latter’s capacity to make them receptive and responsive to citizens’ concerns. In order to achieve the full benefits of social accountability in Ghana, it is recommended that MMDAs should be resourced financially to enable them to frequently engage communities whilst reducing the overreliance on community intermediaries.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Patrick Osei-Kufuor

Patrick Osei-Kufuor is a Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Peace Studies, University of Cape Coast, Ghana. He holds a Ph.D. in Development Studies from the University of Bradford. His research interests include peace, security, development, and social accountability.

Emmanuel Yamoah Tenkorang

Emmanuel Yamoah Tenkorang is a Senior Research at the Department of Environment, Governance and Sustainable Development, University of Cape Coast, Ghana. He holds a Ph.D. in Development Studies. His research interests include environment, resource governance, mining, and social accountability.

Frederick Koomson

Frederick Koomson is a Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Integrated Development Studies, University of Cape Coast, Ghana. He holds a Ph.D. in Development Studies from The University of Cape Coast. His research interests include livelihoods, mining and development.

Richard Oppong Ntiri

Richard Oppong Ntiri holds a Ph.D. in Social Policy and Development from the University of Bath. He is a Research Fellow at the Department of Integrated Development Studies, University of Cape Coast, Ghana. His research interests include mining and conflict, youth development and livelihoods.