This blog post analyzes the intellectual roots of Community-based Monitoring concept and reflects on their implications.
Several months ago, I and Solomon launched a mapping exercise on Community-based Monitoring (CBM) and Citizen Science interventions. Many of the Communitor’s members either know or are involved in the implementation of such projects. We want to use their knowledge and map these CBM initiatives' fields, objectives, implementation design, and success levels. The exercise is still ongoing, but a clear pattern is already emerging. Most of the identified CBM interventions in public services delivery and management of natural resources stress the civic sphere role and overlook the role of the state and political processes. Considering that the state is the main public services provider and plays a crucial role in the way the natural resources are managed, a novice unfamiliar with the CBM concept may be puzzled by this finding. Here is where the theory becomes important. The puzzle becomes a piece of cake if our novice knows the CBM’s theoretical underpinnings. CBM has two intellectual roots: the principal-agent model and the voice and participation model [1]. In this blog post, I provide an overview of these two models and discuss their implications on CBM interventions. On one hand, these two models guide the CBM interventions; on the other hand, they create blind spots leading to inefficacy and limited impact. I do not say anything about Citizen Science, and many of you may wonder why. Well, interestingly, Citizen Science’s theoretical underpinnings differ from the ones of CBM and deserve a separate blog post which I promise to write soon.
Principal agent model
The principal-agent is one of the first models studied by political theory students. It is a relatively simple model grounded in the Rational Choice theories [2], and despite its simpleness, underpins one of the major paradigms in governance and public administration, New Public Management (NPM). Its core idea is that the principal (or multiple principals, e.g. citizens) delegates the power to the agent (e.g. the state) and tasks the agent with executing services or acting on their behalf. The agent becomes accountable to the principals and thus, is held responsible for executing their powers [3]. The state as an agent holds all information about the public services and its provision, and may hide the harmful information from its citizens (the principals) (e.g. details about inefficiency, corruption and mismanagement). This problem is called asymmetric information in the literature. By monitoring the state, CBM interventions solve the information asymmetry problem and equip the citizens to put pressure on the state.
The principal-agent model along with the NPM paradigm emerged in governance as a result of transferring the neoclassical economics principles and methods to political theory and public administration [2][4]. In contrast with the traditional public administration paradigm, where the citizens are passive beneficiaries of public services, the NPM expects the citizens to become consumers, have the choice of voice and exit, and exercise their power on public service providers [4] in case that the state fails to do it [5]. This idea constitutes the backbone of the infamous World Development Report 2004 that put forward the long- and short- routes to accountabilities and advocated for the latter [5][6]. This report influenced tremendously the CBM theory of change. For instance, the majority of CBM impact evaluations focus on the short route to accountability. There are just few exceptions (e.g. [7]).
The voice and participation model
The voice and participation model frames CBM as an intrinsic public good that creates active and well-informed citizens. From this perspective, CBM is not solely an instrument to improve public services, but primarily to enhance poor people's opportunities and capabilities and address social exclusion and poverty through greater citizen participation and voice [1]. This model is inspired by the Capability Theory approach [8] and is close to a recently emerged regime in public administration, New Public Governance [4]. This regime promotes the idea of establishing a partnership between the state and citizens. The citizens are not mere beneficiaries or clients, they have the role of co-producers of public services with greater political influence and representation [4]. The voice and participation model resonates with the rights-based and direct democracy approaches that highlights the collective and public-good nature of accountability [5].
Implications: how the guide blinds
Both models discussed above bring several biases and assumptions in CBM's theory of change. The principle agent model depoliticizes the context around public services delivery and underlines the CBM's instrumental role in tackling the development issues. At the same time, both models emphasize the role of transparency, information and citizens’ voice (the demand side). As result, existing CBM's theories of changes focus on civic sphere and do not pay adequate attention to political realities and state capacity and willingness (the supply side) to respond to citizens' demands [1][9]. Neither transparency nor information nor voice alone guarantee accountability. Citizens often lack the needed sanction mechanisms [5]. Moreover, citizens should have the capacity to organize themselves to make use of the information, and incentivize the state and service providers to deliver adequate services [1]. With the other words, for the CBM to function, citizens should overcome collective action problems [5]. It is believed that ICTs foster collective action by transforming CBMs into more inclusive interventions, that mobilize people for public goods and enable sharing the right strategies. However, ICTs comes with the risk to exclude the poor and vulnerable groups [9], may facilitate sharing wrong strategies [10], and mobilize people for public bads [11]. Another important assumption is that accountability goes hand in hand with higher effectiveness of public service provision and the potential tension between the two is ignored [5].
On top of the identified assumptions and biases, the CBM’s diverging origins create confusions about the CBM mechanisms and impacts. Principal-agent model treats for instance strengthening participants' self-efficacy, agency and leadership as spillover or unintended effects; while voice and participation model considers them either as intermediate effects (i.e. part of the intervention’s mechanisms) or final impact. Finally, these models and the resulting theories of change turn a blind eye on the potential CBM’s negative impact on outcomes of interest and society in general. The revision of the CBM analytical framework would tackle these issues. In the one of the next blog posts, I will attempt to present such an analytical framework.
I really hope our members and readers found this post interesting and useful. I would be happy to receive your comments, questions or suggestions, so, please, feel free to comment below.
References and footnotes
[1] Grandvoinnet, H., Aslam, G., & Raha, S. (2015). Opening the Black Box: The Contextual Drivers of Social Accountability. The World Bank. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1596/978-1-4648-0481-6
[2] Fornasier, M., & Franklin, S. (2019). Governance, rational choice and New Public Management (NPM): a general view (and some critics). Revista Brasileira de Estudos PolÃticos. https://doi.org/10.9732/P.0034-7191.2019V119P327
[3] McGee, R., & Gaventa, J. (2011). Shifting Power? Assessing the Impact of Transparency and Accountability Initiatives. IDS Working Papers, 2011(383).
[4] Pestoff, V. (2018). Co-Production at the Crossroads of Public Administration Regimes: Engaging Citizens in Public Services. In T. Brandsen, Steen T., & B. Verschuere (Eds.), Co-Production and Co-Creation. Routledge.
[5] Joshi, A. (2013). Do They Work? Assessing the Impact of Transparency and Accountability Initiatives in Service Delivery Development Policy Review, 31(S1), s29-s48. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/dpr.12018
[6] Several authors have criticized the focus on the short route to accountability. For instance, Dewachter and colleagues (2018) find the short accountability route to be ineffective in rural water services in Uganda.
[7] Buntaine, M. T., Zhang, B., & Hunnicutt, P. (2021). Citizen monitoring of waterways decreases pollution in China by supporting government action and oversight. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(29), e2015175118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2015175118
[8] Sen, A. (1999). Development as Freedom. Oxford University Press.
[9] Peixoto, T., & Fox, J. (2016). When Does ICT-Enabled Citizen Voice Lead to Government Responsiveness? IDS Bulletin, 47(1).
[10] Cieslik, K., Cecchi, F., Damtew, E., Tafesse, S., Struik, P., Lemaga, B., & Leeuwis, C. (2021). The role of ICT in collective management of public bads: The case of potato late blight in Ethiopia. World Development, 140, 105366. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.105366
[11] Leeuwis, C., Cieslik, K. J., Aarts, M. N. C., Dewulf, A., Ludwig, F., Werners, S. E., & Struik, P. C. (2018). Reflections on the potential of virtual citizen science platforms to address collective action challenges: Lessons and implications for future research [Article]. Njas-Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences, 86-87, 146-157. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.njas.2018.07.008
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