Civic and Citizen Engagement

Citizens play a critical role in advocating for transparency, holding public institutions accountable, and contributing to their effectiveness. They also provide innovative solutions to complex development challenges. Growing evidence suggests that, under the right conditions, meaningful forms of civic and citizen engagement (CCE) can lead to better governance, citizen empowerment, more constructive citizen-state relations, strengthened public service delivery, and, ultimately, enhanced development effectiveness and well-being.

In recent years, global research and practice have placed greater emphasis on making citizen engagement and social accountability practices more strategic and effective. The increasing complexity of policymaking and the failure to adequately address some of humanity's most pressing challenges — such as climate change, health emergencies, growing inequality, conflict, and violence — have prompted governments, development institutions, civil society organizations (CSOs), and citizens to rethink approaches to dialogue, decision-making, and collective action, ensuring these efforts are more meaningful and impactful. There is now heightened focus on understanding and overcoming obstacles to effective engagement, as well as analyzing what works and why.

Engaging citizens is especially crucial in the face of crises like the climate emergency and the COVID-19 pandemic. The effectiveness of response efforts often hinges on community or individual behavior change and the establishment of robust communication and coordination systems across local, national, regional, and global levels.

Moreover, enhanced citizen engagement can have impacts in critical investment areas. In the renewable energy transition, active citizen participation can drive the adoption of sustainable practices and local solutions, fostering community support and social license for green projects that otherwise might not be viable. Similarly, in last-mile efforts for health care and pandemic preparedness, engaging citizens can improve the responsiveness and effectiveness of health initiatives, ensuring that remote and vulnerable populations receive timely and adequate care and are willing and able to receive critical interventions like vaccinations.  

However, the outcomes of citizen engagement are highly context-specific and depend on the capacity and willingness of both governments and citizens to engage. Social, political, economic, environmental, cultural, geographic, and gender dynamics all shape the opportunities and scope for effective citizen engagement. Understanding the context in which CCE practices occur and supporting enabling conditions are essential for achieving results. This is particularly important in the current global context of shrinking civic space.

Last Updated: Jan 07, 2025

Renewal of the World Bank’s strategy for Civic and Citizen Engagement (CCE)

In the current context of multiple global crises, the need and demand for deep and impactful CCE has never been greater. A new approach to CCE is required to address the climate emergency, persistent poverty, exclusion, and conflict and fragility, and to achieve the WBG’s goal to end extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity on a livable planet. The Evolution Roadmap specifically commits to enhance citizen engagement and social accountability and partnerships with civil society to ensure development impact, enhance accountability and governance, and evolve the institution's operating model.

The WBG is operationalizing this commitment through its new civic and citizen engagement results indicator, as reflected in the draft IDA21 Replenishment Report (see Annex 12, pages 98-99) to strengthen the quality and effectiveness of IDA. The new indicator is also reflected in the global IDA forums, where consultations with various civil society stakeholders emphasized the need for the Bank to renew its approach to civic and citizen engagement (see the IDA Forums’ Executive Summary, page 6). This new composite indicator, “Quality of Civic/Citizen Engagement,” is included in the Organizational Effectiveness and Efficiency Dashboard, which isa component of the renewed Corporate Scorecard, to measure the Bank's performance in CCE over time. Unlike the previous citizen engagement indicator that operated only at the project level, the new CCE indicator bridges both the project and country levels, identifies good practices, and highlights areas where more attention is needed. 

According to A Strategic Review of Good Practices and Lessons Learned for Renewal of World Bank Support for Citizen Engagement and Social Accountability conducted in FY24, the World Bank has largely succeeded in meeting the corporate requirements outlined in its 2014 Strategic Framework for Mainstreaming Citizen Engagement. However, these minimal requirements do not represent an adequate benchmark for meaningful and impactful CCE. As a stronger, more strategic, systems-oriented and partnership-based approach to CCE is required, the strategic review identified the following strategic objectives: 

1. Improve the quality and outcomes of project-level CCE;

2. Strengthen country systems for CCE; 

3. Support enabling conditions for CCE; and 

4. Ensure an institutional support system for CCE that is fit-for-purpose. 

To achieve these strategic objectives, the new CCE strategy will propose a systems-oriented and partnership-based approach that responds to the call for enhanced CCE and strengthened CSO collaboration, while also reflecting corporate priorities for simplification and delivery of impact at scale. The strategy will present a selective, tailored portfolio approach that focuses on priority policy and investment areas where citizen feedback and CSO involvement are most likely to accelerate reforms and enhance outcomes, taking into account country-specific factors.

In 2024/2025, the World Bank Group is launching CIVIC: The Civil Society and Social Innovation Alliance. This facility will finance and support CSOs and social innovators to address global development challenges, advancing the WBG’s mission to end poverty on a livable planet. CIVIC will leverage solutions and approaches from CSOs that can help enable and deliver strengthened civic and citizen engagement in collaboration with governments and World Bank programs.  

Current Efforts and Next Steps in Renewing the CCE Strategy

The ongoing efforts and next steps include:

• Integrating corporate commitments into the ongoing rethink of the country development and partnership model;

• Developing a new Civic and Citizen Engagement Framework to succeed the 2014 Strategic Framework alongside an operational plan to support and fund regions in strengthening portfolio-level approaches to building country systems for CCE;

• Creating a new monitoring system for annual reviews of CCE at the country portfolio level, aggregated by region and globally;

• Developing guidance tools/checklists for assessing Borrowers’ Frameworks for meaningful CCE, leveraging synergies between the new CCE strategy and Environmental and Social Framework (ESF) Streamlining; and

• Conducting formal consultations with civil society and other external stakeholders (January-March, 2025) as the CCE indicator and new CCE Framework are developed.

For more information about this process, please contact the Civic and Citizen Engagement team at the Social Development Department.

Last Updated: Jan 07, 2025

The World Bank monitors and reports on the Bank’s efforts to achieve its citizen engagement targets on a quarterly basis for projects approved since July 2015. To date, the following progress has been made:

• Citizen-oriented design: 100% of Investment Project Financing (IPF)s approved in FY22 had a citizen-oriented design, meaning, they had at least one citizen engagement mechanism included in the project design. This represents significant progress from the baseline of 60% in FY14. This trend reflects a clear mainstreaming of CE mechanisms in IPF operations across Global Practices and regions.

• Beneficiary Feedback (BF) indicator in the Results Framework: 98% of IPFs approved in FY22 included a BF indicator in the Results Framework, compared to the baseline of 27% in FY14. This demonstrates progress in mainstreaming BF indicators in IPF operations.

• Reporting on BF indicators by the third year of implementation: 73% of IPFs approved in FY19 reported on BF indicators by their third year of implementation i.e., FY22, relative to the baseline of 20% of projects approved in FY14.Quality of CE tools is steadily improving — While CE tools such as consultations, grievance redress mechanisms and satisfaction surveys for obtaining citizen feedback on analyses, alternatives, and decisions are still most common in projects, the share of approaches that facilitate more intensive citizen engagement have increased recently for both BF indicators and CE mechanisms. These include collaborative or participatory approaches to engage citizens in the decision-making in the project, and involving citizens, CSOs, and third party monitors in measuring, recording and tracking project results and outcomes to improve performance, promote transparency and assign accountability.

Through the use of rigorous impact evaluations, including Randomized Control Trial (RCT) methodology, the Bank is generating evidence of the impact of citizen engagement and social accountability interventions as well as lessons for enhancing impact in future program design. For example:

• In Indonesia, the World Bank supports the government to improve education service delivery in remote villages through the KIAT Guru. This project empowers citizens in remote areas to hold teachers accountable and introduces an assessment which provides a low-stakes and frequent means to benchmark student aptitude by making learning outcomes more accessible to citizens. After a year of the KIAT Guru program, student learning outcomes improved from a baseline of 37% to 49% in math, and from 37% to 50% in language.
• In Cambodia, the Implementation of the Social Accountability Framework (ISAF) program was designed to as a partnership between government and civil society organizations aimed at strengthening accountability and the quality of service delivery in 757 commune councils, 1,404 primary schools, and 605 health centers covering 75% of Cambodia’s provinces, 62% of districts and 56% of communes. An impact evaluation found that the program significantly increased service provider transparency with enhanced availability of information on services provided as well as budget and performance data. Improvements were also found in the increased use of health centers, reduced wait times for service as well as more polite staff.
• An impact evaluation of the Ethiopia Social Accountability Program (ESAP) found that the program increased access to information, citizen participation and citizen satisfaction with public service delivery. For example, survey respondents from ESAP target communities were 10% more likely to indicate that their local community can contribute to improving service delivery.

For good CCE practice cases from WBG operations, please refer to Annex 2 of “Citizens at the Center: A Strategic Review of Good Practices and Lessons Learned for Renewal of World Bank Support for Citizen Engagement and Social Accountability”.

Last Updated: Jan 07, 2025

Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) are key actors, and the World Bank has historically benefited from various partnerships with them. These partnerships have involved operational engagement to enhance development outcomes and eliciting their input into Bank policies and programs. For instance, as part of the IDA21 Replenishment discussions, the World Bank engaged with CSOs through regional and global IDA forums, where participants emphasized the need to renew the Bank’s approach to civic and citizen engagement.

In 2024/2025, the World Bank Group is launching CIVIC: The Civil Society and Social Innovation Alliance, a new finance and support facility dedicated to CSOs and other social economy actors. CIVIC is designed to leverage innovative solutions and support efforts from civil society and social innovators to tackle some of the world’s most pressing development challenges. It aims to advance the WBG’s mission to end poverty on a livable planet. The WBG is actively seeking foundation partners and co-investors for this flagship initiative. The inaugural platform under CIVIC’s framework, Green Accountability, provides CSOs with grant financing and technical support for ecosystem building and innovation acceleration, ensuring that climate finance effectively reaches and benefits the communities most impacted by climate change. Green Accountability works to not only drive work at the local level, but vertically integrate local voices and solutions into regional, national, and global forums. Through a networked approach, the platform connects northern and southern ecosystems, fostering knowledge exchange, streamlined financing, collaboration, and co-design at every level. 

The Civic and Citizen Engagement team at the Social Development Department has been collaborating with CSOs on the CCE agenda through the World Bank-CSO Working Group on Citizen Engagement. This monthly meeting, held since 2017 with Washington-based CSO representatives, provides an opportunity to address CSO queries and explore collaboration opportunities.

The global CCE team also collaborates with the Expert Advisory Council (EAC) on Citizen Engagement, which was formed during the preparation of the 2014 Strategic Framework to guide its development and implementation. Members of the Council—including experts from civil society, academia, government, the private sector, foundations, and development partners—were selected for their knowledge, experience, and ability to represent a broad range of global and country perspectives.