The Significance of Civic Engagement in Fostering Social Accountability

Abstract

Governance triggers lots of arguments in many academic writings around its consequences, pertaining the relation between the government in one side and other societal actors.  Civic engagement pops up as one of the major mechanisms towards legitimizing democratization process through enhancing decision making and accountability; enhancing consequently the acceptance and consent of outputs.  In other words, civic engagement presumably fosters the recipient’s acceptance and responsiveness towards governance outputs; providing thus legitimacy to prevailing system. Moreover, civic engagement plays a crucial role in promoting social accountability; compensating thus the limitations of formal mechanisms of accountability.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the role of the civil society in the promotion of social accountability, as a result of adopting “participatory governance” as a way of governance. This analysis investigates the prerequisites and evaluation criteria for assessing effective social accountability. Also the study explores the arguments arise around the risks associated with depending on societal actors in fostering accountability rather than depending on formal institutional mechanisms; represented mainly in sacrificing expertise for the sake of probable armature endeavors from the society side. Accordingly, the study ends up with some helpful recommendations if civic engagement is the choice adopted to foster accountability.

Keywords: governance, civic engagement, public policy, decision making