How can donors best support the strengthening of domestic accountability in developing countries?

On 6th December 2010, the Belgian EU Presidency – in collaboration with ECDPM and the OECD Development Assistance Committee’s Network on Governance (GOVNET) – organised a roundtable on Domestic Accountability and Aid Effectiveness, as part of the European Development Days. The overall goal of the Roundtable was to focus attention on the importance of domestic accountability, legitimate governance and well-balanced state-society relations for good development outcomes, and to put those issues at the centre of the debate about how aid can most effectively contribute to development. The specific aim of the Roundtable was to explore how donors can best support the strengthening of domestic accountability in developing countries.

This question is of huge importance for two sets of reasons: firstly, because of the important role that accountability plays in shaping the political landscape and therefore the dynamics of development; and secondly, because of the impact that donors – through the provision of aid and the pursuit of other policies that have a developmental impact – can have on the workings of accountability in developing countries.

Photo By Dietmar Temps under Creative Commons