Social Accountability of Individuals

After reading Ackerman’s article on “Human Rights and Social Accountability”,  it seems apparent that no matter the program, much of the responsibility pertaining to human rights relies on individual and civic action. While governmental action may have some impact, it seems as though there are many more changes that appear to be affective as a result of individual action. This is significant, because it would seem that the general purpose of comprehending world poverty and human rights, would be to understand the reasoning behind it, and what actions can be taken, what actions are in fact, effective, and how would this action possibly be integrated on a macro level.

Earlier in this course,  an article by Tina Rosenberg referred to a program called Opportunidades, in the article ‘A Payoff Out of Poverty’. This program, which originated in Mexico, was an incentive program integrated in certain parts of Mexico, used to see the effectiveness of incentive programs on battling poverty. What the end result was, suggested that incentive programs can improve conditions to a degree, but at the end of the day, individual motivating factors were key in affecting poverty on a grand scale. This coincides with literature by John Ackerman, who suggests that “’Social accountability’ is therefore a relatively new strategy which is distinct from Weberian reform, independent agencies and marketization (Ackerman, 2005). It can be defined as ‘an approach towards building accountability that relies on civic engagement, i.e. in which it is ordinary citizens and/or civil society organizations who participate directly or indirectly in exacting accountability.” (World Bank, 2003a:1) This would suggest that while incentive programs are affective to a degree, more research needs to be done that explores programs motivating individuals and accountability among individuals in order to have a concrete way of battling poverty on a large scale.

In order to understand the reasoning behind poverty, governments often look at reoccurring factors and try to see how to solve the problem. When faced against something as intricate as poverty, there are several different aspects one must have. In order for some action to be taken, governments will develop programs such as Opportunidades that address some aspects in order to have a better understanding of what works and what does not—in terms of effectively addressing the issues of poverty.  “The guiding idea behind the methodology is to introduce market-type incentives to the functioning of government. Through the report card methodology, agencies can see how their performance changes from year to year as well as compare themselves to other agencies in a comparative, competitive dynamic similar to that imposed by the market. This occurs through the independent action of a civil society organization and the power of information. As one PAC staff member has written, ‘the long term significance of [the report card] process is its message to the staff of government agencies that citizens matter, their voice has to be heard and responded to, and that the process is neither temporary nor reversible.’ (Balakrishnan, 2004)” Another incentive program, such as the report card methodology as suggested in Ackerman’s article, demonstrates how incentive programs are affective, however, independent action within civil society is the most effective action, and that government agencies cannot necessarily impact that action through incentive programs.

Another issue associated with government action, is the possibility of corruption within public offices, and how the tainted actions of those in power, therefore affect those in a lesser standing—specifically those in poverty, as is suggested by Daniel Kaufmann. “Further, we explored and found evidence about the link between the prevalence of corruption in a country and the absence of political and civil rights. This finding applies to corporate ethics as well as misgovernance on the part of public institutions. Some powerful elite firms engage in grand forms of corruption such as capture of the laws, regulations, and policies of the state for their benefits. We find that such capture of the state, in turn, appears to be the result of the violation of political and civil rights by government.”

Overall, it is apparent that there is still much to be done that can improve the current conditions of poverty, and lack of action working towards the preservation and protection of human rights. It is suggested that governmental responsibility is not the sole cause for the current conditions of poverty and lack of universal human rights. It is suggested that new programs targeting individual responsibility and civic obligations versus governmental intervention could have a larger and more positive impact than solely governmental responsibility when it comes to solving poverty. This idea is significant in the sense that much of the literature thus far, has addressed the issues with lack of governmental action and the issues associated with governmental programs—but there is little literature addressing individual programs that target civil responsibility and individual motivation at battling poverty.

Sources:

Ackerman, John. 2005. “Human Rights and Social Accountability.” Social Development Papers.

Kaufmann, Daniel. 1996. “Human Rights, Governance, and Development: An empirical perspective.” Development Outreach.

Rosenberg, Tina. 2008. ‘A Payoff Out of Poverty’. New York Times.

© 2010, Diana_Chiang. All rights reserved.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 10th, 2010 at 6:30 AM and is filed under 2010, 3rd Article, Development, Health, Int'l Econ. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.