The Social Underpinnings of Decentralized Governance

Abstract

Accountable governance is defined by four elements: First, the definition of interests on the part of citizens and groups of citizens; second, the aggregation or accumulation of those interests via some “technology”, whether it be by an election, lobby, or social media; third, the translation of those preferences into government behavior; and fourth, a means whereby citizens can evaluate the quality of government behavior. Decentralization has the potential to impact each of these links. Most of the rigorous thinking on how it does so has been institutional in nature. In other words, it has focused on how formal rules governing elections, leadership selection, fiscal federalism, etc. impact political accountability. Donor programming and accompanying impact evaluations, on the other hand, have focused less on institutions and more on mobilizing civil society and “social accountability”, i.e. on approaches to informing and mobilizing citizens such that they might become better participants in politics. These programming efforts have progressed with considerable normative enthusiasm but without, for the most part, reference to recent academic breakthroughs on the social conditions for cooperative behavior and collective action. The goal of this chapter is to consider how recent innovations in the study of information flows and cooperation in social networks might inform donor programming on social accountability. Research on social networks provides insights into the relational characteristics of communities that are certain to impact the prospects for accountability, and gives rigorous underpinnings into the frequent, if underspecified, claim that “context matters”.