Can Bottom-Up Institutional Reform Improve Service Delivery?
Peer Reviewed
Date issued
Oct 2014
Subject
Institutional Strengthening;
Citizen Safety;
Transparency and Anticorruption
JEL code
H40 - Publicly Provided Goods: General;
H83 - Public Administration • Public Sector Accounting and Audits
Country
Colombia
Category
Working Papers
This article makes three contributions to the literature. First, it provides newevidence of the impact of community monitoring interventions using a unique
dataset from the Citizen Visible Audit (CVA) program in Colombia. In particular, this article studies the effect of social audits on citizens' assessment of service delivery performance. The second contribution is the introduction a theoretical framework to understand the pathway of change, the necessary building blocks that are needed for social audits to be effective. Using this framework, the third contribution of this article is answering the following questions: i) under what conditions do citizens decide to monitor government activity and ii) under what conditions do governments facilitate citizen engagement and become more accountable.
dataset from the Citizen Visible Audit (CVA) program in Colombia. In particular, this article studies the effect of social audits on citizens' assessment of service delivery performance. The second contribution is the introduction a theoretical framework to understand the pathway of change, the necessary building blocks that are needed for social audits to be effective. Using this framework, the third contribution of this article is answering the following questions: i) under what conditions do citizens decide to monitor government activity and ii) under what conditions do governments facilitate citizen engagement and become more accountable.
