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Editorial - Deborah Eade, volume 11, number 5
Multi-stakeholder accountability is a term, or at least a concept, now being applied not only to development agencies, but also to the corporate sector, and is even seeping into the language of government. In the development context, the issues tend to revolve around the legitimacy of an agencys mandate and accountability both to donors and to recipients of the resources (financial and non-financial) it handles. The implication is that if agencies can be downwardly as well as upwardly accountable, then their mission is self-evidently justified. In the corporate sector, the talk is of social responsibility within the framework of the triple-bottom-line the realisation that it is ultimately bad for business to damage the natural environment or to rely on the over-exploitation of the workforce. Its what, back in the early 1980s, The Brandt Report referred to as enlightened self-interest. Governments, so many of which are divesting themselves even of the commitment to universal social provision some under the duress of structural adjustment regimes, others by choice are increasingly treating citizens as clients: full and active citizenship, in the sense of being able to shape public policy, becomes contingent upon the ability to pay. The better-off are offered better services, at a price they can afford; while the poor are expected to put up with a basic safety-net service. The rhetoric is of stakeholders in society, but the implicit direction is towards that of the wealthier citizens effectively being shareholders in the private companies that provide their health insurance, pensions, and so forth while the less well off make do with what they can get. (1)
Contributors to this issue of Development in Practice look at different aspects of the accountability issue. Stephanie Barrientos, Sharon McClenaghan, and Liz Orton examine the effectiveness of voluntary codes of conduct, based either on direct consumer pressure or in order to preempt it, in enhancing local compliance with equitable social standards in the South African fruit industry. Into A. Goudsmit and James Blackburn look at the mechanisms for public accountability set in place through the municipalisation process in Bolivia, while Ahmad Seyf addresses the question of corruption and takes issue with the argument that it can ever be considered to enhance the development process. Reidar Dale and Joitske Hulsebosch take the accountability question down to the grassroots the former in terms of local control over credit and other microfinance resources, with reference mainly to Sri Lanka, the latter in describing the application of a participatory methodology in Mali that was intended to give local communities ownership over various interventions that were intended to be in their interest. And finally, Jorge Santiago, summarising the views of poor communities in Southern Mexico, speaks of the need to base the economy in solidarity and mutuality if it is genuinely to be inclusive and equitable.
Notes
1 Bob Deacon (2000:29) notes, with concern, that The history of the struggle to build welfare states teaches us that social equity, with high levels of social service provision accessible to all, has only been secured and retained when welfare services are available to and used by the middle class. It is the sharp elbow of the middle class every bit as much as working class pressure and/or concern for the poor that has ensured good-quality social provision. The better off will only accept to be taxed if they also benefit.
References
Deacon, B. (2000) Globalization and Social Policy, Occasional Paper 5, Geneva 2000, Geneva: UNRISD.
 Contents
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Abstracts Main Page |
First Abstract 
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