Citizen Engagement

Citizens play a critical role in advocating and helping to make public institutions more transparent, accountable, and effective, and contributing innovative solutions to complex development challenges.

Growing evidence suggests that, under the right conditions, meaningful forms of citizen engagement and social accountability (CESA) can result in better governance, citizen empowerment, more positive and 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 increased emphasis on how to make citizen engagement and social accountability practices more strategic and effective.  The increasing complexity of policymaking and the failure to find adequate solutions to some of humanity's most serious and pressing problems - such as climate change, health emergencies, growing inequality, conflict, and violence - have prompted governments, development institutions, civil society organizations (CSOs) and citizens to rethink how to engage in dialogue, share decision-making and collective action that is more meaningful and impactful. Increased attention has been paid to understanding and addressing obstacles to effective engagement and analyzing what works and why.

Engaging citizens is especially important in the face of crises like the climate emergency and the COVID-19 pandemic, as the effectiveness of response efforts can often hinge on behavior change at the community or individual level, and building systems for communication coordination from local, national, regional and global levels.  

However, the outcomes of citizen engagement are also context-specific and depend on the government and citizens’ capacity and willingness to engage.  Social, political, economic, environmental, cultural, geographic, and other factors, such as gender dynamics, shape the opportunities and scope for effective citizen engagement. Understanding the context in which CESA practices are undertaken and supporting enabling conditions are key to achieving results. This is particularly important in the current global context of shrinking civic space. 

Last Updated: Apr 10, 2023

The World Bank Group (WBG) is committed to listening to stakeholders and accelerating progress in the fight to end poverty and boost shared prosperity in a sustainable and inclusive manner. Engaging citizens and mobilizing communities in the process can help bring greater transparency, accountability, and social inclusion, thus improving development results.

The World Bank’s Strategic Framework for Mainstreaming Citizen Engagement in WBG Operations was developed in 2014 to more systematically mainstream citizen engagement in WBG-supported operations. The Strategic Framework defines citizen engagement as the two-way interaction between citizens and governments or the private sector within the scope of WBG interventions. This approach gives citizens a stake in decision-making in order to improve intermediate and final development outcomes.In 2018, the Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group conducted an evaluation of the results of the Strategic Framework. The evaluation found that the WBG succeeded in generating awareness and buy-in of the citizen engagement agenda among senior management and staff, with citizen engagement valued across the WBG. Monitoring of the implementation of IEG's recommendations over the past five years identified both areas of significant progress and persistent challenges. Ongoing efforts to respond to the IEG's recommendations strive to achieve deeper, more meaningful citizen engagement activities embedded in country systems.

Experience shows that CESA approaches that use a strategic mix of multiple tactics and tools, are adapted to the specific context and oriented towards long-term vertical and horizontal integration, and strengthen country systems are most likely to be effective in yielding sustainable development results.  This involves working with governments to build political will for CESA and adopt a culture of openness, transparency, participation, accountability, and institutionalized power-sharing, all of which contribute to enhanced development effectiveness. This extends beyond responsiveness at the project level and acknowledges the core role of CESA at the country level.  It involves a shift to a systems approach that makes local to national linkages—amplifying local-level citizen voices to influence decisions, actions, and institutional reforms up to the national level (and beyond). In this context, a strategic review is underway to inform and strengthen the next phase of CESA.

The World Bank also recognizes the critical role that civil society organizations (CSOs) play in the accountability landscape of its projects and the broader development finance community. CSOs have been at the forefront of promoting CESA, advocating for transparency, and monitoring government performance. The Global Partnership for Social Accountability (GPSA), a multi-donor trust fund and convening platform hosted at the World Bank, has focused on supporting CSOs to enhance their capacity to engage with governments and development partners, and in promoting social accountability. By building the capacity of CSOs to participate in governance processes, advocate for better policies, and monitor service delivery, the GPSA is helping to bridge the gap between citizens and governments, and ultimately contributing to improved development outcomes. The GPSA works on a diverse set of governance issues such as climate, anti-corruption, health and education. Based on the findings of a thorough independent evaluation to be completed in April 2023, the GPSA evolution hopes to work in concert with the systems approach for citizen engagement, supporting CSOs and strengthening approaches to better integrate civil society, citizen engagement and social accountability in country systems to improve global public goods delivery in IDA and IBRD countries.

Last Updated: Apr 07, 2023

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.

Last Updated: Apr 07, 2023

In preparation of the Strategic Framework, an Expert Advisory Council (EAC) was formed to guide its development and implementation. The EAC continues to meet in order to advise on ways to strengthen the implementation of citizen engagement activities. The members of the Council – experts from civil society, academia, government, private sector, foundations, and development partners – were selected based on their knowledge, experience, and ability to represent a range of global and country perspectives.

CSOs are key actors and the Bank has historically benefited from different types of partnerships with them, engaging them operationally to improve development outcomes, and eliciting their input into Bank policies and programs. An important channel for engaging CSOs is the Global Partnership for Social Accountability (GPSA), established by the WBG Board in 2012. The GPSA aims to expand opportunities for civil society organizations to work together with their governments to solve governance problems, especially in the delivery of services, and to improve development outcomes using social accountability mechanisms including citizen feedback. Some 54 countries have opted into the GPSA, which has supported over 32 operations in 40 countries. It provides grants to CSOs and supports them with capacity-building support, along with monitoring and evaluation, knowledge sharing and learning. The GPSA’s Global Knowledge Platform is a repository of diverse knowledge resources for social accountability practice, and a source of knowledge sharing and joint learning as well as practitioner networking. Building on its experience of the past eight years, the GPSA is leveraging the lessons learned to support coalitions of CSOs to provide tailored responses during the COVID-19 pandemic.