Participatory Governance Reform: A Good Strategy for Increasing Government Responsiveness and Improving Public Services?

Johanna Speer

World Development, 2012, vol. 40, issue 12, 2379-2398

Abstract: Participatory governance mechanisms have been widely promoted in developing countries. They are claimed to bring about several public policy benefits, including increased accountability, higher government responsiveness, and better public services. This literature review shows that the evidence on these claims is positive, but limited. Moreover, it indicates that enabling and motivating citizens and public officials to make participatory governance arrangements work as effective accountability mechanisms is a challenging enterprise in most developing countries. Hence, more comparative cross-case research based on medium and large samples is needed for judging whether participatory governance arrangements can increase government responsiveness and service quality.

Keywords: participatory governance; accountability; government responsiveness; public services; literature review (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (57)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X12001568
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:40:y:2012:i:12:p:2379-2398

DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2012.05.034

Access Statistics for this article

World Development is currently edited by O. T. Coomes

More articles in World Development from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().