Corruption blights the daily lives of the poor in developing countries. They must pay bribes to access services and avoid harassment. The quality of services suffers as funds intended to benefit the poor are diverted to the pockets of government and NGO officials, managers of private companies and foreign ‘intermediaries’.
Governments and official agencies used to turn a blind eye to these problems. But this is no longer the case. Anti-corruption is now clearly established on the development agenda. At the global level, Transparency International publishes details of corruption, ranking countries in its annual Corruption Perceptions Index. And grassroots movements tackle the issue at local level. The Association for the Empowerment of Workers and Farmers in India introduced social audits in the 1990s. These audits are village meetings official government accounts of local expenditure are read out, so villagers can raise concerns about apparent discrepancies. Bottom-up accountability is now common in many countries under the general label of Community Monitoring Initiatives (CMIs).
A recent Campbell systematic review identified four types of community monitoring:
- information campaigns which provide information on local services and peoples’ right to access these services
- scorecards, or citizen report cards, allow community members to rate the quality of local services
- social audits bring together community members, service providers and politicians to monitor implementation of specific investments
- grievance redress mechanisms provide channels for community members to report about mistreatment, corruption and poor services.
Yes. Community monitoring interventions reduce corruption.
The review summarizes findings from 23 different CMI interventions. There were 10 examples of information campaigns, three examples of scorecards, five examples of social audits, and two that combined information campaigns and scorecards. There are no rigorous studies of grievance redress mechanisms.
And do they work? Yes. Community monitoring interventions reduce corruption. They also improve utilization of health services. But no significant effect is found on school enrolments or dropouts. There is no improvement in health service waiting times, but there is an improvement in weight for age, though not child mortality. There are beneficial effects on education outcomes as measured by test scores.
The review also finds that CMIs appear to be more effective in improving outcomes when they promote direct contact between citizens and providers or politicians, and when they include tools for citizens to monitor the performance of providers and politicians.
But, as usual, the evidence base is limited. The authors of the review recommend that future studies should assess the effectiveness of different types of CMIs in different contexts, sectors and timeframes to identify when and how such programmes may be most effective in improving outcomes.