"This Working Paper from DFID’s Evaluation Department offers a menu of Voice & Accountability (V&A) indicators, and suggests steps for building monitoring and evaluation frameworks for V&A interventions. It provides a check list of management issues, and some ideas for data collection. It does not
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attempt to make any judgement about the indicators identified, as this work will be further developed under DFID’s ‘Suggested Indicators for Governance’ work, due in 2010. The paper is intended for DFID advisers and managers working on V&A initiatives at the country level. It will also be of use to people outside DFID who are interested in understanding how V&A work contributes to development outcomes; or who want more information about data collection methods for V&A measurement. V&A interventions range from work with governments on policy and reform processes, to activities at community level on civic education and rights awareness. DFID supports a significant amount of V&A work through government and non-state actors, in sector programmes and in work with civil society organisations including the media. We now need to establish the evidence base to show what change has resulted." (Executive summary)
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"Citizens’ Voice and Accountability (CV&A) work has emerged as a priority in the international development agenda from the 1990s onwards. In their CV&A work, donors recognise the importance of context: it shapes relation to that context. However, context awareness has not proven sufficient to enab
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le donors to grapple with key challenges posed by the interaction between formal and informal institutions, the prevalence of the latter over the former in many instances, and underlying power relations and dynamics. Some examples of positive impact of CV&A interventions have emerged from the interventions analysed for this study. This is mostly at the level of positive citizen awareness, empowering certain marginalised groups, and encouraging state officials. However, within the sample analysed, such impact/effects have remained limited and isolated, and have so far proven difficult to scale up. A critical factor leading to the observed limited nature of results is related to the fact that donor expectations as to what such work can achieve are too high, and are based on misguided assumptions around the nature of voice and accountability, and the linkages between the two. There is a tension between the long-term processes of transforming state-society relations and donors’ needs/desires to produce quick results. Scaling up sustainability are also issues not currently sufficiently addressed within intervention design and implementation." (Executive summary, page v)
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"Does USAID’s democracy promotion program work? Although some prior studies have examined specific projects in individual countries, no prior effort has studied the question on a world-wide basis, and no prior study has encompassed the entire post Cold-War period. [...] In the first phase of that
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research, we found that the answer to that question was “yes.” That is, on average, in the period 1990-2003, USAID’s investments in democracy promotion produced significant increases in the national level of democracy as measured by Freedom House and Polity IV indicators. [...] The current report presents the results of the second phase of the project “Cross-National Research on USAID’s Democracy and Governance Programs.” [...] In the current effort, the data set is extended from 14 years to cover 15 years (1990-2004) and 165 countries, yielding 2,416 observations (country-years). [...] USAID civil society and media assistance have a significant positive impact directly on their respective sectors, and USAID human rights assistance has a significant negative impact on the human rights outcome." (Executive summary, page 2, page 5)
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"This paper has demonstrated that the benefits for the general Afghan and Iraqi public derived from the ‘promotion of independent media’ by institutions like the NED are questionable, especially for parties interested in encouraging more deliberative or participatory forms of democracy. Instead,
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the promotion of ‘independent’ media in Afghanistan and Iraq seems to be playing a key role in the promotion of low-intensity democracy or polyarchy. Additionally, it also appears that countries of greater geostrategic value need more ‘democratization’, for example, both countries have roughly the same population but ‘oil rich Iraq received 20 times more American media development assistance per year than war-ravaged Afghanistan, one of the poorest nations on earth’ (Rohde, 2005: 29). With such large amounts of money being wielded by ‘democracy promoters’, their short term influences may impact heavily on both countries, yet perhaps the most significant effects of these media interventions will be felt in the long term. Previous case studies have shown that groups or individuals supported by ‘democracy promoters’ are expected to move on to fill leading roles within their societies." (Conclusion, page 124)
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"The paper presents an overview of three areas of democracy assistance in Mozambique between 1994 and 2005. Support to elections appears as the most prominent sector of democracy assistance in both financial and political terms. External actors have effectively influenced some technical areas and co
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ntributed to institutional development (the Technical Secretariat for Electoral Administration [STAE] and some civil society organisations [CSOs]), but overall electoral support has not resulted in furthering the quality of democratic practice. Human rights assistance covers support to the justice sector, the police and civil society. The fragmented justice sector proved to be a very complex partner and expectations of progress were often frustrated. Major efforts were made during the period under review to (re)train police officers on a massive scale, but the effect of the training has not yet resulted in a marked change of corporate behaviour, also because the training was not complemented in a timely fashion by structural reforms. Media assistance was only modest in scope. The one major initiative that was undertaken resulted in wider coverage of the elections by national radio, the establishment of some community radio stations and technical support given to independent print media. Nevertheless, it is felt that the proliferation and improvement of media initiatives did effectively contribute to furthering democratic values." (Executive summary)
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"This article focuses on an important but neglected area of democracy assistance: international aid to build and strengthen independent media in transition and post-Conflict societies. The purpose of such assistance is to promote democratization by facilitating the free flow of information, transpar
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ency, accountability in the government, and economic growth. The article describes the origin of media assistance, examines the focus of media programmes, and presents some of the most important policy and programmatic lessons derived from fieldwork in seven locations: Afghanistan, Bosnia, Central America, Indonesia, Russia, Sierra Leone, and Serbia. The article ends with a plea for further research by the academic community on the subject." (Abstract)
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"This study critically evaluates international democratization assistance in postconflict societies to discern what has worked, what has not, and how aid programs can be designed to have a more positive impact. The authors offer a unique recipient perspective as they explore three dimensions of demo
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cracy promotion: elections, free media, and human rights. Drawing on the experiences of Afghanistan, Cambodia, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Mozambique, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Uganda, they suggest concrete ways in which the international community can better foster democratization in the wake of conflict." (Publisher description)
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"The purpose of the final evaluation was to provide the Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) and the U.S. Agency for International Development with an assessment of the relevance, effectiveness, and lessons learned from OTI’s mega-program in Afghanistan. Since evaluations of the media program ha
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d been undertaken and a study of management issues was planned, this evaluation addressed the following fundamental questions: 1. Was OTI strategic? 2. Did OTI promote government legitimacy? 3. Did OTI’s use of participatory democratic processes increase citizen’s connections to each other and to local authorities?" (Executive summary, page 6)
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"Diese Untersuchung kommt zu dem Schluss, dass der Umfang der westlichen Förderung der Transformationsprozesse in der Ukraine seit 1991 nicht unerheblich war. Doch leiden sowohl die nichtstaatlichen als auch staatlichen Programme an konzeptionellen und organisatorischen Mängeln. Nachholbedarf best
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eht insbesondere bei der organisationenübergreifenden Dokumentation, Koordination und Evaluation der Implementierung verschiedener nationaler und internationaler Hilfsmaßnahmen. Bezüglich der Kooperation vieler in Kyiv vertretener westlicher Organisationen sind zwar eine ganze Reihe mehr oder minder etablierter Partnerschaften und Kommunikationskanäle – insbesondere zwischen einigen großen Förderinstitutionen, wie der Weltbank, der European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), den verschiedenen UNO-Programmen und der United States Agency for International Development (USAID) – auszumachen; letztere Agentur schätzte 2002 sogar ein, dass „die Koordination der Förderer in der Ukraine exzellent [ist]“.1 Die hiesige Untersuchung jedoch ergibt, dass das Potenzial an sinnvoller Zusammenarbeit zwischen themen- und zielverwandten, staatlichen und nichtstaatlichen, anglophonen und nichtanglophonen Programmen bei weitem nicht ausgeschöpft ist." (Einleitung, Seite 5)
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