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Can Civil Society Overcome Government Failure in Africa?

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  • Shantayanan Devarajan
  • Stuti Khemani
  • Michael Walton

Abstract

Government failures are widespread in Africa. Symptoms include absentee teachers, leakage of public funds, monopolized trucking, and employment-restricting regulations. Can civil society do anything about these failures? Would external donor support to civil society help? We argue that the challenge for civil society is to improve government functioning by strengthening political incentives—the underlying cause of government failure—rather than bypassing or supplanting the state. This paper reviews the available evidence on civil society interventions from this perspective. Although the current increase in political competition and extensive citizen engagement in Africa seems to create the potential for civil society influence, we find that there are large knowledge gaps regarding what works, where, and how. Some rigorous evaluations find significant impacts of civil society involvement on development outcomes, but these studies typically pay insufficient attention to the mechanisms. For example, are impacts due to overcoming government failure or to changing private household behavior, leaving the wasteful allocation of public resources untouched? We conclude that donor support to civil society should take an approach of learning by doing through ongoing experimentation backed by rigorous, data-based evaluations of the mechanisms of impact.

Suggested Citation

  • Shantayanan Devarajan & Stuti Khemani & Michael Walton, 2014. "Can Civil Society Overcome Government Failure in Africa?," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 29(1), pages 20-47.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:wbrobs:v:29:y:2014:i:1:p:20-47.
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/wbro/lkt008
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    Cited by:

    1. Khemani, Stuti, 2015. "Buying votes versus supplying public services: Political incentives to under-invest in pro-poor policies," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 84-93.
    2. Fox, Jonathan A., 2015. "Social Accountability: What Does the Evidence Really Say?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 346-361.
    3. Dewachter, Sara & Holvoet, Nathalie & Kuppens, Miet & Molenaers, Nadia, 2018. "Beyond the Short versus Long Accountability Route Dichotomy: Using Multi-track Accountability Pathways to Study Performance of Rural Water Services in Uganda," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 158-169.
    4. Trust Madhovi, 2020. "The Impact of Social Accountability Mechanisms on Fiscal Management Challenges Facing Goromonzi Rural District Council, Zimbabwe," Journal of Public Administration and Governance, Macrothink Institute, vol. 10(2), pages 141160-1411, December.
    5. Harry Blair, 2018. "Citizen Participation and Political Accountability for Public Service Delivery in India," Journal of South Asian Development, , vol. 13(1), pages 54-81, April.
    6. Alawattage, Chandana & Azure, John De-Clerk, 2021. "Behind the World Bank’s ringing declarations of “social accountability”: Ghana’s public financial management reform," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).

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