Democratic Accountability

In partnership with the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) in Stockholm, the Institute is engaged in a project on developing a framework for assessing the democratic accountability of service delivery. The main toolkit for the project has been drafted and the project will enter a new phase of piloting the toolkit in selected countries.

Increasingly, the ability for countries to provide high quality service delivery at the national, regional and local level is subject to increasing democratic scrutiny from those that service delivery are meant to benefit. But how democratic is service delivery? What mechanisms are in place to hold office holders to account? What kinds of access and follow-up do citizens have with respect to frontline services? How can these mechanisms be assessed in ways that provide practical solutions for reforming authorities and institutions responsible for service delivery?

Answers to these and other questions are provided in the framework, which draws on previous work that Essex has carried out for International IDEA on Assessing the Quality of Democracy.