The politics of establishing pro-poor accountability.

Abstract

The Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) experiment, along with other inno vations promoted by the international financial institutions over the past decade, has promised to secure pro-poor forms of accountability in relation to development policy-making. New consultative processes and new forms of conditionality each promise to re-order relationships between poor citi zens and their governments, and between governments and donors respec tively. Using evidence from Bolivia and Zambia, we identify three critical problems with these claims. First, there is a tendency to focus on promoting accountability mechanisms that are largely discretionary and lack signifi cant disciplinary power, particularly those reliant on certain forms of civil society participation. Second, donors have failed to overcome the contradic tions regarding the role of extra-national actors in securing accountability mechanisms within particular states. Third, there is a tendency within the PRS experiment to overlook the deeper forms of politics that might under pin effective accountability mechanisms in developing countries. Ensuring accountability is not simply a technocratic project, but rather is critical for a substantive politics of democratization which goes to the heart of the wider contract between states and citizens. The PRS experiment, as located within a broader project of ’inclusive liberalism’, reveals little potential to address this challenge.