Beschreibung:
The Ethiopia Social Accountability Program (ESAP) seeks to empower citizens, strengthen civil society, promote citizen engagement in public venues, modify how public officials engage citizens, and improve service delivery. This paper assesses the impact of the second phase of the ESAP intervention and contributes to the emerging literature on the effectiveness of social accountability interventions. A survey was administered to 3,411 households in two time periods (2013 and 2017). Difference-in-difference with matching was used to compare similar households in ESAP (treatment) and control woredas. Although conditions to generate meaningful social and policy change were not favorable because of the national state of emergency, drought and economic slowdown, the survey finds preliminary evidence that the presence of ESAP helped to establish the foundations of social accountability at local levels across Ethiopia. Several noteworthy findings include: increases in citizen participation in local committees and other policymaking venues; improvements in citizen satisfaction with the more immediate delivery of basic services; increases of more critical attitudes regarding more structural problems; and a more modest decline in access to information and use of specific social accountability tools (e.g. community scorecards) in comparison to steeper declines in non-ESAP woredas in the context of a national state of emergency