The Social Accountability Antiserum for Corruption

Source: www.paulhawken.com

The photo above shows Paul Hawken, a very famous environmentalist, author and entrepreneur. His quote below relates to my own social accountability advocacy.

Good management is the art of making problems so interesting and their solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them. - Paul Hawken

Contrary to what many of us have been accustomed to, I believe that graft and corruption will not be solved by mere anti-corruption measures. I firmly believe in the social accountability approach that uses constructive engagement between citizens and government.

Citizens around the world are discovering the power of social accountability to influence government institutions and programs, and, consequently, shape the life of their communities. Social accountability -  in the words of the Affiliated Network for Social Accountability in East Asia and Pacific (ANSA-EAP) - refers to initiatives taken by citizen groups to hold government to account for its decisions and actions. It is citizen groups claiming their right to keep an eye on how government goes about its business. This undertaking, also known as a social contract between the citizens and the government is called constructive engagement. Although social accountability action does not always require it, a noticeable side of constructive engagement is that it is always accompanied - and oftentimes even preceded - by intense political action and pressure by citizens. Of course this is only possible when reciprocal trust and openness is willingly given to each other. Constructive engagement does not necessarily mean that the citizen groups should no longer disagree with the government or vice versa, it simply means that both parties are open and responsive to each other.

Although both concepts may appear to be closely related, and in some aspects, overlapping within the bigger framework of actions supporting good governance, social accountability has a more basic character that its absence connotes bad governance defined as the lack of transparency, accountability and participation. Anti-corruption mechanisms are usually fault finding, investigative, prosecuting, highly technical and antagonistic in nature while social accountability is citizen centered, engaging, sympathetic where citizens are co-drivers or co-operators and generative where the tools are less technical and systematic. Anti-corruption methods give a premise that corruption is already in place while social accountability addresses the issue of governance more than the (corruption) offense committed. Social accountability works on citizens to curtail anti-corruption efforts and eventually improve basic service delivery by the government. Anti-corruption puts focus on government systems and processes. There is still citizen's involvement in anti-corruption but the primary concern is the system and thus, the end goal of anti-corruption is to improve performance. In contrast, social accountability focuses on civic consciousness and engagement thereby being citizen centered. The end goal of social accountability is to demand what is rightfully theirs and not point out flaws in the system. Anti-corruption involves laws, processes and systems to improve operations. In a sense, anti-corruption can be a result of social accountability. In fact, one of the intermediary objectives that social accountability is working is the diminution of corruption.

Graft and corruption is apparently inherent in our system but social accountability champions would never bow down and say that this is the way the cookie crumbles. Instead many people are now looking for a cure to this communicable disease. However, I say that social accountability is like a vitamin that improves the immunity of our government to deflect graft and corruption. It is just strategic to focus our efforts in thwarting graft and corruption rather than stopping it because in all aspects, prevention is always better than cure.