During the municipal elections of May 2016 in Lebanon, a civil society network called Beirut Madinati (Beirut is my city!, hereafter BM) sparked interest by running for office with a list of independent candidates. Embracing a platform promoting ‘transparency and accountability’ as well as gender equity and a code of ethics, these activists may be cast as major innovators on the political scene. So threatening was their political programme that established power brokers belonging to a dozen of political factions felt compelled to present one unified list to counter BM. Although BM narrowly failed to gain any seats on the municipal council, its initiative did send a shockwave into the salons of the incumbent elites, presumably because it put social accountability and local governance issues firmly on the agenda. There is no doubt that the notorious political deadlock in Lebanon (30-months of bickering over the vacant presidency) as well as its dismal delivery of public services (erratic waste management, poor public transportation, soaring energy costs) served as fertile ground for BM. Transforming its lack of political experience into an asset, the movement’s focus on improving urban livelihoods by advocating evidence-based policies and empowering ordinary citizens –ostentatiously including women- did mobilize substantial parts of the electorate. This paper examines objectives and strategies of the BM campaign, its accomplishments and failures. Furthermore, we ask whether this type of CSO-powered activism represents a novel recipe to counter a sclerotic political system marked by sectarianism and dynastic tendencies. Can initiatives such as BM –which is not an isolated manifestation of emancipated citizenship in Lebanese society- aspire to usher in reform of local governance structures and practices? In this respect, the hypothesis may be formulated that while BM’s short-term gains were modest (since none of the list-members got elected), the long-term gains may reside in its function as a ‘challenger-party’ that forced established parties to acknowledge thematic demands rather than communal or material rewards. One can wonder, therefore, if this bottom-up format is suitable as a transferable model to champion social accountability in the MENA region.

In mid December of 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian street vendor, set himself on fire in protest of harassment, humiliation, and the confiscation of his wares by local government authorities. Bouazizi’s act became the catalyst for the Tunisian revolution and more widely for the forthcoming Arab Spring revolts across the Middle East. At this time Amira Yahyaoui, a young female exiled Tunisian activist, was sending videos of the uprising received from her fellow Tunisian activists to the French media and lobbying newspapers to cover the demonstrations in her country. Yahyaoui’s influence within the collective movement led to regime change through her advocacy from her exile in France via social networks which encouraged people to take to the streets. With President Ben Ali gone, she returned to Tunisia. With her fellow activists, she began the labor of transforming political systems and educating society about civic engagement and the need for governmental transparency – this would be educative work necessary to build a post revolutionary Tunisia. The purpose of this paper is to understand the adult education and participatory democratic work that Yahyaoui spearheaded in post revolution Tunisia. In this case study, the theoretical frameworks of conscientization and third space are utilized to describe Yahyaoui’s development of the watchdog political organization, al-bawsala, for the purpose of transformative learning and knowledge transmission in regard to political practices toward democracy in Tunisia. The focus will be on platforms used by this non-governmental organization (NGO), Al-Bawsala, to educate and raise political consciousness, namely marsad (parliamentary observatory), debates or town hall meetings between citizens and elected officials, and marsad baladia (municipal observatory) touching on all areas of socio-economic life and social justice. This case study research design included three methods of data collection: phone interviews, extended email exchanges, and content analysis of Facebook, twitter, the Al-Bawsala website and You Tube. The phone interviews and email exchanges with Amir Yahyaoui took place over a three month period from February 2013 – April, 2013. The review of internet data sources began in early 2013 and continue to date. Findings inform participatory adult education strategies from cyber-activism to participatory democracy.

Against the backdrop of campaigns to uproot ISIS, and street protests since 2015, PM Al-Abadi has sought to deepen local governance reforms in a bid to increase responsiveness, and improve access to services while preempting the formation of autonomous regions. The latest push hastens decentralization within eight ministries to the governorate and districts levels and marks a shift from de-concentration to delegation. Reforms are part of efforts to redefine state-society relations through curbing corruption, enhancing transparency, and encouraging participation. International donors supported accelerating decentralization as instrumental for stabilizing areas liberated from terrorism (WB 2016). To what extent, and under what conditions, do these efforts reinforce social accountability governance principles of transparency, vertical accountability and participation? How inclusive are civil society dialogues and partnerships? And, how responsive is the state? Finally, do these efforts create spaces for grassroots empowerment given weak capacities, distrust of institutions, patronage politics, marginalization of the poor, and influence of Popular Mobilization Front? The paper critically examines the potential for social accountability governance through deepening decentralization in Iraq by empirically examining developments in two sectors. It focuses on the planning and implementation of education and social protection policies, in three relatively stable provinces: Basra, Al-Qadessya and Mayssan. The three provinces occupy different positions on the HDI scale and boast variant records of decentralization thus far, with Basra and Al-Qadessya pioneering participatory local governance experiments, while Mayssan taking only tentative steps. Based on focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews with local decision-makers, elected officials, and civil society actors, the study investigates the relative capacity and openness of Iraq’s nascent decentralized structures to engage with inclusive civil society actors on the ground, and reflect on the potential for social accountability and grassroots empowerment in the challenging context of state fragility and conflict. Preliminary findings suggest that Iraq’s top-down decentralization policies are likely to create greater room for social accountability processes in provinces with higher HDI. To varying degrees, limited capacities of authorities, poor differentiation of local actors’ roles, and distrust of civil society actors hamper responsiveness from the state side. Further, the increasing influence of the PMF militias, the prevalence of patronage politics, as well as the extent to which civil society actors are linked to political parties and exclude the poor and marginalized, shed doubt on the potential for grassroots empowerment in Iraq through local social accountability structures.

The 2011 revolution in Egypt has awakened new-found interest in democracy and government accountability from civil society. In this political and administrative context, policy-makers put an increased focus on transparency and accountability within the Social Fund for Development (SFD). In 2013, CARE Egypt received funding for the Mainstreaming Social Accountability in Emergency Labor Intensive Investment Project (SA-ELIIP) to support local community and third party monitoring activities on the grants released by the SFD. The grants are labor intensive investment projects in community development initiatives in health; education; and environmental sectors; and public works grants in water irrigation; pavements; school, housing, youth centers and nursery infrastructure maintenance. The project uses social accountability tools to enhance spaces of interaction between power holders and the local community. Based on the baseline survey conducted in 2013, we found that 39% of the respondents defined good governance as being fair between the citizens, while 27% of them defined it as referring to citizen’s participation and taking their opinion into consideration. 98% of Civil Society respondents showed willingness to participate in initiatives that apply social accountability to improve services compared to 84 % of government respondents. The project mid-term evaluation conducted in February 2015 indicated that creating spaces of interaction between citizens and power holders has resulted in greater efficiency and responsiveness by SFD officials and better reporting on service delivery. Currently, an end line study is being conducted to assess social accountability practices in the local context and to measure the extent to which it has supported citizen voice and narrowed the distance between the state and the citizen. The end-line study is being implemented in select communities of Sharkeya; Beni Suef and Assuit governorates, using both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Quantitative research tools (questionnaires) apply proportionate sampling as follows: 50% Males and 50% Females; 50% ELIIP Beneficiaries and 50% ELIIP Non-Beneficiaries. Qualitative data collection tools employ in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with the project stakeholders. Interviews are documenting participants’ views on the effectiveness of the spaces of interaction between power holders and citizens as well as their willingness to continue to use this space.

In the wake of the Arab Spring, governments in the Middle East and North Africa region have responded to calls for greater accountability by creating new “participatory” institutions, often with the support of international donors. The focus in this paper is on Morocco and local experiences with Community Score Cards (CSCs), mainly in the education sector, based on three empirical qualitative case studies. CSC initiatives serve as examples of potentially innovative, even if foreign-inspired, mechanisms to renew the “social contract” between citizens and the state after a period of upheaval and social contestations of state power. The projects are funded by the European Union and The World Bank, and implemented by the international NGO CARE in partnership with Moroccan NGOs. The paper will first present the positive outcomes of the projects in terms of tangible improvements in service delivery as well as an increased sense of empowerment on the part of the population. It will then explain the findings by focusing on the “demand” side of social accountability, i.e. the role of citizens and civil-society participation in achieving accountable outcomes, and how they perceive the state. Who are these citizens, what are their organizational resources, and under which conditions do they engage in demanding accountability from the (still largely authoritarian) state? Another set of findings will address the role of new intermediaries (also called ‘brokers’ or ‘interlocutors’) in the form of local officials, consultants, or volunteers in translating global discourses and tools for social accountability into local language and context. A third set of findings will focus on the “supply” side and the organizational incentives for civil servants to deliver better social services in a context marked by resource scarcity, corruption, and high social inequalities. Overall, the paper argues that so far, the projects have not furthered an understanding of social accountability as a means for local actors to hold the state administration to account based on legal entitlements. Rather, the projects have focused on improving the parents’ associations’ internal accountability and fund-raising skills to pay for physical improvements of the school. This illustrates the local actors’ appropriation of foreign-inspired social accountability tools in ways that contribute to the shift of public service provision from government to civil society.