Deepening Voice and Accountability to Fight Poverty

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Deepening Voice and Accountability to Fight
Poverty
Javier Santiso Chief Development Economist
Deputy Director OECD Development Centre
DFID - OECD World Bank Paris ? 30 March 2006
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OECD Countries can still improve transparency

• Free access to government information is recent
  80 of OECD Members in 2000.
• Governmentcitizencivil society partnerships in
  policymaking are still rare in OECD countries.
• Its a new frontier for governments and
  citizens alike.

Source OECD 2001, Citizens as Partners
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And poor practice has its risks for Government

• Quality, credibility legitimacy of policies are
  lost if citizen inputs are not reflected in
  decisions.
• OECD governments must invest adequate time and
  resources
• to build robust legal, policy and institutional
  frameworks,
• To develop appropriate tools and
• evaluate their own performance in engaging
  citizens in policymaking (OECD 2001, Citizens as
  Partners).
• In non-OECD and developing countries the time,
  resource and institutional constraints are even
  greater.

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OECD-DAC donors engage citizens in development
cooperation policy through

• Information communications transparency about
  aid and what it achieves sustains public
  support for development cooperation.
• Development education about global
  interdependence and inequalities to strengthen
  global solidarity.
• Support to civil society e.g. aid-trade-debt
  campaigns in 2005.

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Financing uneven across DAC countries but
increasing in most
How is government communication financed in
developing countries?
Source OECD Development Centre Policy Insight
13, 2005.
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Majorities support democracy in Africa
Source Afrobarometer Briefing Paper No. 9, 2004
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But little public satisfaction with economic
reforms in Africa
Sources Afrobarometer 2002
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Little public satisfaction with economic reforms
in Latin America
Source Latinobarometer Report 2005
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Democratic trends 1976-2003 How to deal with
Open and Closed Societies?
How should we discriminate among political
regimes when building strategies for
communication for development?
Source Polity IV Project
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OECD Development Centres contributionCoordinat
ion of a network of communicators from donor
agencies-- Heads of Information (HOI) network --

• Exchange best practices on effectively
  communicating development results to OECD
  taxpayers.
• Identify emerging practices on how HOI work with
  country staff and developing country governments
  for more effective communications about MDGs, aid
  effectiveness, etc. to OECD and developing
  country citizens.
• Prepare a joint policy position paper on
  mainstreaming communication with key actors to
  sensitise OECD policymakers and the development
  community to the issue.

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Thank you very much for your participation