Engaging Citizens for Better Development Results

"How effectively has the Bank Group mainstreamed citizen engagement at the project, country, and corporate levels, and what is the evidence on how this process contributes to the achievement of development outcomes?"

In 2013, the World Bank Group decided to put citizen engagement in the mainstream of its development practice. "Citizen engagement" refers to multiple interactions between citizens and governments, or the private sector. It is a two-way relationship that implies the existence of a tangible response to citizens' feedback. While ordinary citizens are increasingly eager and able to make their voices heard, the space for citizens' voices is shrinking globally, as several governments constrain actions by civil society organisations (CSOs) and muzzle the media. In this context, the World Bank Group's commitment to citizen engagement warrants investigation. This evaluation by the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) aims to inform the Board of Executive Directors and the management of the World Bank Group institutions on the effectiveness of mainstreaming citizen engagement to support development processes and outcomes.

The evaluation adopted a multilevel, mixed methods, and case-based design that entailed 6 portfolio reviews, 8 case studies of country-level engagement, and 40 case studies of engagement mechanisms embedded in 19 projects across 11 countries, corroborated by evidence from literature reviews. To assess the corporate environment, the evaluation team conducted a survey and interviewed staff and management and participated in an online consultation with CSOs.

Examples of citizen engagement mechanisms used at the World Bank Group include: consultation; grievance redress; the collection, recording, and reporting of inputs received from beneficiaries; capacity-building for engagement; citizen/community collaboration on planning and/or execution of a policy, programme, or project; citizen monitoring, evaluation, and oversight; and efforts to empower citizens/communities with resources and decision-making power.

Case studies conducted for this evaluation confirm the literature finding that "thick" approaches - those combining multiple tools to enable collective action and public sector responsiveness - are more promising than "thin" approaches that are not matched with vertical integration of independent monitoring and oversight or do not include support to increase government's capacity to respond.

Key findings:

• The World Bank Group succeeded in generating awareness and buy-in of the citizen engagement agenda among senior management and staff.
• The number of World Bank projects with non-safeguards-related citizen engagement mechanisms and citizen engagement indicators increased over the past few years, and more than 90% of investment projects approved during fiscal year (FY) 2014-2016 plan to use at least one citizen engagement mechanism - that is, have a citizen-oriented design.
• Projects that resort to multiple mechanisms and pay closer attention to inclusion, albeit still a minority, are on the rise: The share of projects with thick engagement increased from 27% in FY11-13 to 38% in FY14-16.
• Before the corporate commitment, 42% of projects had at least one indicator measuring how citizen feedback was provided; after the introduction of the commitment, this percentage increased to 63% in FY14-16, with a steady annual increase up to 95% in FY16.
• The International Finance Corporation (IFC) leveraged Performance Standard 1 (PS 1) to encourage its clients to engage more systematically with stakeholders throughout their business cycle.
• The World Bank Group has started to leverage the new country engagement model adopted in 2014 to consult with a wider range of stakeholders (e.g., indigenous groups, youth, and women's groups) during the preparation of Country Partnership Frameworks (CPFs).
• Almost all Development Policy Financing (DPF) operations approved between FY11 and FY16 found that almost all included some reporting on the consultation and participation of stakeholders.
• The corporate arrangements in place to oversee and coordinate the commitment (Citizen Engagement Secretariat and focal points) have worked well, operationalising definitions to screen activities and projects.

All that said, the evaluation also found that, as the number of projects with a citizen-oriented design and citizen engagement indicators in results frameworks has increased, the application of quality standards in the design, implementation, and monitoring of citizen engagement has been limited. For example, 70% of the citizen engagement mechanisms reviewed describe at the design phase how they plan to take citizen feedback into account. However, almost none signals whether they plan to inform citizens about the actions taken in response to their feedback. This is perhaps not surprising, the IEG notes, as high-quality engagement is intensive - requiring dedicated skills, time, and resources - and cannot be realistically applied in all projects and countries.

IEG field work indicates that engagement that meets quality standards can generate the necessary changes to achieve better development outcomes. For example, it can lead citizens to better trust service providers and be willing to intensify their contribution to the project's activities. (The improvement of trust in public services can be achieved, according to the literature, through rigorous participatory methodologies embedded in durable institutional systems that can bring resolution to citizens' feedback and complaints.) World Bank Group projects that integrate citizens' inputs at the design and implementation stage can succeed in improving targeting or providing satisfactory responses to beneficiaries' grievances. Government and service providers can ultimately institutionalise mechanisms for greater accountability. Unfortunately, the Bank is not currently providing incentives to track results at this level, which would allow it to learn from failure and successes.

There are a variety of barriers at play, including limited dedicated staff time to operationalise the approach beyond ensuring compliance with the corporate target. That is, given the Bank Group's ambitious objective of mainstreaming citizen engagement to enhance and sustain development outcomes, the overall amount of dedicated human, technical, and financial resources is not fit for purpose. The Global Partnership for Social Accountability (GPSA) is one of the few channels that the World Bank has for building capacity, but its potential is still underexploited. The IEG suggests that better synergies with other relevant agendas, such as the Environmental and Social Framework (ESF), could support more substantial work through pooling of resources, capacity, and experience.

To sustain and deepen the effectiveness of its citizen engagement efforts, the evaluation proposes the following recommendations for the World Bank Group (see Chapter 5):

1. Integrate into future corporate priorities for citizen engagement the need to achieve greater depth and quality, and clearly communicate these priorities to staff and stakeholders.
2. Encourage and support efforts of regional, country, and Global Practices teams to establish, where appropriate, "thick" citizen engagement that is regular and continuous, uses multiple tools, and is embedded in country systems - e.g., by more systematically using existing channels of dialogue and stakeholder engagement and applying tools to plan, monitor, and assess results achieved at the various levels.
3. Strengthen the monitoring of citizen engagement activities by systematically adopting results framework indicators that are results oriented, with special emphasis on indicators that show how feedback loops were closed and how diverse groups of stakeholders were included.
4. Seize the opportunity of the implementation of the ESF to leverage citizen engagement mechanisms - beyond consultations and grievance redress mechanisms (GRMs) - to reach the objectives of managing social risks, strengthening country systems, and promoting social inclusion.
5. Ensure that IFC clients' stakeholder engagement activities required by PS 1 in projects with affected communities are carried out during appraisal and supervision of the projects and systematically documented.

In conclusion, the findings of the evaluation confirm that mainstreaming citizen engagement is both technically ambitious and politically challenging. As it sets out to define the next phase of this agenda, the World Bank Group may be facing a trade-off between including citizen engagement mechanisms everywhere (a "universal" approach that may remain superficial) and maximising quality: engagement that can lead to development outcomes.