State-NGO-Community Synergy and Pathways for Transformative Changes in SA/Deliberative Spaces
s mentioned at the outset, the study attempts to answer whether the SA institutions/deliberative forums enhanced the capacity of ordinary citizens to provide inputs into decision- making and planning local development projects as well as efficiently monitor the service delivery processes; opened up spaces for citizens to effectively voice their grievances and concerns regarding the governance of service delivery institutions; enabled citizens to better articulate their felt needs and effectively deliberate or negotiate their demands with their representatives; and managed to entrench deliberative democracy at the local level.
The research found complex dynamics surrounding these areas of enquiry. We attempted to do a nuanced and granular analysis of these complexities—recursive relations between meta-level structural
determinants and individual agency, positive and negative feedback loops, transformations in incentives, norms and preferences of actors, and pathways of change. We hope that such analysis will enable a better appreciation of the governance problems and can help tease out relevant policy recommendations for designing efficient SA institutions/
spaces. Such analysis will also benefit the development of strategies for engaging external agents such as state officials and NGOs to nudge these spaces towards normatively desirable directions—
inclusive governance and efficient pro- poor development. Figure 3 provides graphic representations of the ensuing analysis that shows the two actual pathways: 1) the largely dysfunctional and normatively undesirable pathway and 2) the normatively desirable and functional pathway of SA spaces.
A
Figure 3: Actually existing pathways of the evolution of SA/deliberative forums
META DETERMINANTS
Political (local political elites’ influence on/capture of institutions, patron clientelism), Social (status, class, kinship, gender), Norms (patriarchy, deference to social hierarchy, norms and incentives
informing passive citizenship), and Associated Practices
Pathway 1
SA forums operate without any programmatic interventions from NGOs and/or state
Pathway 2 SA forums operate with NGO
and/or state
Negative feedback loops leading to vicious/perverse cycle of meta determinants and micro- incentives, behaviour, norms and practices
Positive feedback loops tend to neutralise, to a certain extent, negative feedback loops leading to virtuous cycle with potential for transformative changes
- Maintain and reinforce perverse, undesirable individual-level incentives, behaviour, norms and practices - Also maintain disempowered
status of the citizens
- Reinforce passive citizenship (citizen as client)
- General shifts from undesirable/perverse individual-level incentives, behaviour, norms and practices to desirable/non- perverse ones
- Promote empowerment of the citizens
- Promote and nurture pro- active citizenship
- Largely dysfunctional equilibrium of SA forums - SA forum remains as the de-
facto closed space
- SA forums tend to become functional to a certain extent - Limited advance from close
space towards an invited space
- Synergy of State-NGO- Community to nurture SA forums will possibly lead to a robust functional equilibrium over time
Three characteristics of deliberative democracy hardly satisfied
- Three characteristics of deliberative democracy are observable to a limited extent - Deliberative democracy tends
to promote shifts in norms
HOW FUNCTIONAL ARE THE SA AND DELIBERATIVE INSTITUTIONS/
FORUMS?
Apparently, SMCs have managed to remain somewhat functional without any support from external agencies.
Its effectiveness, as a SA forum, is significantly affected by the workings of the meta-level dynamics of both local politics (sometimes even national) and sociology of the community. These dynamics have both negative and positive effects on the SMCs. Negative effects are manifested in the ways member selection process becomes vulnerable to political influences and is captured by a coterie of political elites.23 Consequently, partisan consideration becomes dominant selection criteria, resulting in the inclusion of many less- educated and unqualified individuals in SMCs. Such control by a coterie also limits SMCs’ independence and narrows down general members’ manoeuvring space within the committee.
The meta-level dynamics also work as positive factors. SMC members who enjoy higher social status tend to be more motivated than others (due to social status-related incentives, as discussed earlier) and these individuals are found to be more capable of exacting accountability of the school teachers.
This point is critical, since the study finds that in general, only two individuals—
the president and the headteacher—
essentially control the SMC. The balance of power between them turns out to be a significant factor in determining the SMC’s capacity to effectively monitor quality.24
23Naomi Hossain (2010), citing several studies conducted during the last decade, also pointed out the influence by and capture of SMCs by the political elites. See also Lewis & Hossain, 2019.
24For similar observation, see Hossain, Hassan, Rahman, Ali, & Islam, 2019; Hassan, 2008.
If the social status of the SMC president is higher than that of the headteacher, then the capability of SMCs to exact accountability of the school teachers also becomes stronger. Again, the downside of such social process is that it has made the SMC virtually a captive entity of the president25 (near-monopolistic control in case of primary schools but oligopolistic control in case of secondary schools—
since a few other elite members also show interest in school monitoring).
Such individualistic control is, arguably, partly due to some kind machinations by powerful individuals to monopolise power, but we believe that it can be better explained by considering demand- side constraints—members’ general reluctance to actively participate in SMCs (that leads to the de facto monopoly role of the president) to exact accountability of the school teachers, which they tend to believe is not their obligation or duty.
Discussions of the four cases indicate that except SMCs, the available formal SA spaces tend to remain largely dysfunctional unless they are activated and nurtured by the NGOs. But when these spaces are functioning, for whatever reasons, citizens of different classes and genders are found to be eager to aggressively seize the opportunity to voice their demands, whether individual- centred (popular with the poor) or collective (mainly raised by the educated rural elites).
Key reasons for the dysfunctionality of these SA institutions are linked to the strong incentives of the elected leaders of the local government to avoid accountability as often: their financial and other activities are not transparent;
25 Presidents of SMCs usually belong to the highest echelon of the social hierarchy of the local community.
4. CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS
they maintain mutually-beneficial links with elites, relatives, and supporters/
followers using public resources; and they get involved in leakages of funds/
materials related to development projects and social protection services, etc.
Beyond these, a major reason appears to be resource constraints. It is worth noting that the government has established SA institutions in UPs but did not allocate central funds for their operations.
Currently, UP leaders use their own resources to organise SA forums (mostly OBMs since UP leaders have strong incentives to keep this operational, as discussed earlier). Given that political leaders and UP representatives are already prone to avoiding accountability, privately-funded SA forums are inevitably transformed into patronage machines for generating and maintaining political/
social capital of the funders.
Thus, the processes of organising these forums significantly deviate from the formal rules (for instance, forums are not conducted in open public spaces, not appropriately announced, only favoured people are invited, etc.) and the forums tend to lose their mandates—ensuring accountability of the public service delivery.
On the demand side, such privatisation of SA forums also undermines formation of social capital and citizen empowerment in the local community and breeds cynicism among the local citizens about the usefulness of engaging with the public authority (citizens do meticulously calculate the socio-economic opportunity costs related to collective actions—time, resource, political risks, and risks of losing patronage/benefits as clients).
All the above factors discourage institutionalisation of SA and deliberative democracy to take roots.
HOW DOES NGO INVOLVEMENT CONTRIBUTE TOWARDS CREATING FUNCTIONAL SA AND DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS/
FORUMS?
NGO funding of these SA forums and concomitant nurturing of pro-active citizenship (making community members aware of laws and procedures and their rights, how to deliberate in a public forum, etc.) can actually reset the dynamics of the SA away from the scenario described above—trends this and other studies have empirically documented.
Vested interests will certainly resist/
manipulate any attempts by external agencies to neutralise such perverse dynamics, resulting in dysfunctional SA institutions. Hence, government endorsement will be necessary to counter such interests. State actors, however, hardly have the capability to micro- monitor local governance processes and here some astutely designed state-NGO collaboration mechanisms will need to be in place (this aspect will be further discussed below).
Interestingly, this study found that many UP leaders also welcome such NGO interventions because the robust form of SA forums, well-participated by aware and motivated citizens (so far only possible when NGOs are involved), tend to be partially aligned with the leaders’ incentives. The benefits of UP leaders include: an opportunity to share real information related to budget constraints, status of service delivery and project implementation, etc., which can neutralise the negative perceptions about the leaders that citizens usually harbour—
often based on rumours or ill-informed campaigns by political adversaries. Also, raucous forms of venting of grievances and frustrations by the citizens, termed
as rude accountability, can cool-off the tense and often hostile relations between the leaders and the citizens—
a great incentive for the leaders since this can contribute to the maintenance and increase of votes. Moreover, the information supplied by the citizens in these forums, contributes to better decisions and planning. Finally, leaders are able to free-ride on NGO interventions (organising such widely-participated SA forums would be prohibitively costly for many UP leaders) to bolster their political and social networks.
Note that such robust forms of SA forums do not accrue benefits to leaders only but to citizens as well. Robust forums reduce information asymmetry—the difference in the amount and quality of information—between the principals (citizens) and agents (leaders), which has been a dominant barrier to holding the leaders accountable. Citizens may find some of their personal and collective grievances addressed/resolved or the benefits that they missed until then, both individual and collective, ensured by the forum. Functional deliberative democracy contributes to increasing citizens’ sense of dignity as valued members of the community, boosting their morale and thus, contributing to the development of pro-active citizenship.26
A male farmer remarked, “I could personally sit with UP Ward members and discuss beneficiary selection.” Similarly, a housewife was surprised to have her opinions taken seriously during the meeting proceedings.
26 As the chapter on the Forums for Social Protection in SoG 2018 report observed: “...members [of the forum], especially those from lower economic rungs, enjoyed the dignity...and the social prestige from membership in the platform.”
Beyond the positive impact on the accountability process, deliberative spaces also contribute to norm shifting (from negative types to positive ones) by making new information available to the participants. For example, marginal citizens, when empowered and trained, may no longer find it inappropriate or intimidating to ask questions about budget and expenditure to the UP leaders in an open forum. As noted by an expert on this subject: “The social norms we may come to discuss in collective deliberation are part of a rich web of beliefs, values, ideas, and scripts. Deliberation unearths such beliefs, values, and their connections.
When deliberating, we may become aware of inconsistencies between our own beliefs or between our beliefs and the new information” (Cristina Bicchieri, 2017, p. 156, emphasis supplied).
Clearly, NGO intervention can transform the existing zero-sum game between the two actors (leaders and citizens) into a positive-sum game. With continuous NGO involvement, the new functional equilibrium can be sustained since such status quo tend to be incentive-compatible with all participating actors. But, NGO’s involvement in the SA process inevitably raises the question of sustainability—an elephant in the room in development discourse. What will happen to the SA forums when NGOs leave?
Institutionalising a robust and effective SA process is certainly not easy, especially where the majority of the citizens are still non/semi-literate and poor with almost no experience of participating in SA or deliberative forums. Clearly, the current rural society of Bangladesh hardly offers a promising ground for the natural evolution of a ‘claimed space’ or ‘third
4. CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS
space’27—a space claimed or created by the citizens themselves for ensuring their rights. The situation is further complicated by the informal governance (varied and complex forms of patron- clientelism) that underpin the resource distribution processes at the local level, the rough edges of which are also soothed by a robust form of the moral economy28 thereby largely dampening any possibilities subaltern militancy.
In this context, transformative policy agenda of generating social capital and incentivising pro-active citizenship at the local community level perhaps cannot be accomplished by relying only on the community’s own strength or ‘self-governance’. This will also require external agents’ interventions to supply necessary resources (knowledge, information, skills) for building collective action capacity of the local community.
This means that a synergy of the local communities and external NGOs will be necessary to co-create social capital.
More importantly, the process also needs protection from the hostile local political interests through the scaling up of social capital—linking local community with the
27Claimed space refers to: “…spaces which are claimed by less powerful actors from or against the power holders, or created more autonomously by them”
(Gaventa, 2006, p. 6). In Third spaces “…social actors reject hegemonic space and create spaces for themselves. These spaces range from ones created by social movements and community associations to those simply involving natural places where people gather to debate, discuss and resist, outside of the institutionalised policy arenas” (Gaventa, 2006, p.
6, emphasis supplied).
28 For a mapping of multiple types of de facto SA practices informed by moral economy, see Hassan
& Nazneen, 2013. For empirical accounts of moral obligations-based relationships between UP leaders and citizens, see Ahmed, Razzaque, & Rashid, 2016.
relevant local administrative agencies, attaining endorsement of citizen engagement by the central government, and ensuring political/administrative/
policy supports for SA initiatives.
The process is exemplified in the case of Forums for Social Protection (FSP)—a successful case of NGO intervention which has been examined in-depth in the report. Currently, in varied cases of SA institutions as well as in other governance initiatives, NGO interventions tend to be short-term project-oriented and typically when the intervention ends, citizens engagements falter and perverse incentives of the political or UP leaders remerge, and whatever social capital was formed in the community by the interventions deplete rapidly. The study has noticed this scenario in all relevant cases; the findings corroborate with other researches and project evaluations of NGOs over the years.
WHAT KIND OF SA SPACES TEND TO EMPOWER CITIZENS MORE THAN OTHERS?
Empirical evidence, in this regard, points towards Shobha. Shobhas usually have a large number of participants, cutting across classes and gender, and the deliberation process tends to be open and vibrant, making it relatively more difficult for elites to control or manipulate the SA space. These events often take place in sites close to the citizens of the Ward and during the appropriate time, making it convenient for poor men and especially women to participate.
Absence of a fixed agenda means free- flow of discussion and deliberation not hamstrung by technical issues that require some education and previous knowledge and understanding of the issues discussed. Given these features,
Shobhas tend to approximate the notion of an invited space.29
In contrast, due to lack of these factors, SMC (primary schools), deliberative committees (WC and SSC) and OBM (this share only one feature with Shobha—
somewhat large size of the participants) largely fail to ensure robust participation of the citizen members (in primary school- based SMC, WC, SSC) and of common citizens (in OBM). Consequently, these SA spaces become ineffective and in reality, closed spaces.30
29 Invited spaces are “…those into which people (as users, citizens or beneficiaries) are invited to participate by various kinds of authorities, be they government, supranational agencies, or non- governmental organisations” (Cornwall, 2002, p.
25). In our case, the invited spaces are formal-legal, i.e. formal by invitation (participation of the citizen offered by the state instead by a non-state actor) and formal by right (participation is legislated rather than ad hoc). See Gaventa, 2006 for a discussion on these concepts. Also note that mode of participation of citizens in invited spaces should be characterised by inclusiveness instead of being exclusionary due to the control by elites, either state or societal.
30 In closed space “…decisions are made by a set of actors behind closed doors, without any presence of broadening the boundaries for inclusion. Within the state, another way of conceiving these spaces is as ‘provided’ spaces in the sense that elites (be they bureaucrats, experts, or elected representatives) make decisions and provide services to ‘the people’, without the need for broader consultation or involvement” (Gaventa, 2006, p. 5).
In secondary school-SMCs, other elite members of the committee are able to proactively take part in the deliberation process, so the space cannot be monopolised by the president and the headteacher. Consequently, the deliberative space tends to be characterised by the oligopoly of elites, ensuring some degree of social accountability.
The existing SA/deliberative spaces are graphically presented in Figure 4 below.
(Boxes in the figure show the governance drivers at work in different SA forums.)
4. CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS
Figure 4: The status of existing SA/deliberative space
Normatively Desireable Space Normatively Undesireable Space
Closed Space
SMC (P)
SMC (S)
WS SSC
OBM WC Low Citizen Engagement
High Citizen Engagement
Invited Space
- Large participant size; therefore, relatively more difficult for UP leaders to control or manipulate - Open and vibrant deliberation process - Free-flow of discussion is not restricted (in practice) by fixed agendas - Deliberation not hamstrung by technical issues - Beyond president and headteacher other elite members of the committee also proactively take part in the deliberation process - Such elite oligopoly tends to ensure some degree of social accountability - Virtual monopoly of the Chairperson but some elite participation - Free-flow of discussion is restricted (especially constrains poor citizens) due to technicalities of budget - Monopolisation by the UP leaders - Participation of citizen members very low - Limited technical knowledge constrains participation by the citizen members
- Monopolised by the president and headteacher - Non-elite guardian members lack confidence (due to internalised class and status considerations) to deliberate pro-actively and consequently, they generally remain passive. - Although entirely a citizen forum, in practice, controlled by the UP leaders - Members are usually selected form UP leaders’ clients or politically loyal supporters - Forum remains largely dysfunctional