Assessing the effectiveness of social accountability interventions in selected district assemblies in Ghana

Social accountability interventions have been implemented in low-and middle-income countries as a strategy to improve state-citizen engagement. However, there has been a minimal systematic attempt to document the effectiveness of social accountability initiatives, especially their ability to stimulate accountability actions by citizens. Subsequently, this paper assesses the effectiveness of a social accountability project in Ghana to build the capacity of citizens to participate in state-society engagements and how such engagements resulted in citizens’ actions. Participants were selected from eight Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) in Ghana using a mixed-method approach and a multi-stage sampling procedure involving simple random and purposive sampling techniques. Key informant interviews and Focus Group Discussions were used to collect data from representatives of traditional authorities, media houses and public officers from MMDAs. Structured interviews were used to collect data from 240 participants of the social accountability project to complement the qualitative data. The project was relevant in addressing national efforts to increase citizens’ participation in local governance. Furthermore, the project raised awareness and increased knowledge about participatory principles and platforms for participation among citizens. Overall, the social accountability interventions improve state-citizen engagement. The frequency of citizen-state engagements increased with the project’s inception but did not enhance the responsiveness of the MMDAs to citizens’ demands due to resource constraints and the overreliance on intermediaries to follow up on community issues at the MMDA, thereby failing to translate into agency for collective action. As a result, the paper recommends that social accountability interventions should improve cooperation between public officials and community members around the delivery of specific public services to build trust between them. Furthermore, such interventions should orient public officials to be receptive and responsive to the concerns of community members.