Four Elements of Empowerment

There are thousands of examples of empowerment strategies that have been initiated by poor people themselves and by governments, civil society, and the private sector. Successful efforts to empower poor people, increasing their freedom of choice and action in different contexts, often share four elements:

• Access to information

• Inclusion and participation

• Accountability

• Local organizational capacity.

 While these four elements are closely intertwined and act in synergy. Thus, although access to timely information about programs, or about government performance or corruption, is a necessary precondition for action, poor people or citizens more broadly may not take action because there are no institutional mechanisms that demand accountable performance or because the costs of individual action may be too high. Similarly, experience shows that poor people do not participate in activities when they know their participation will make no difference to products being offered or decisions made because there are no mechanisms for holding providers accountable. Even where there are strong local organizations, they may still be disconnected from local governments and the private sector, and lack access to information.

 a. Access to Information

Information is power. Informed citizens are better equipped to take advantage of opportunities, access services, exercise their rights, negotiate effectively, and hold state and nonstate actors accountable. Without information that is relevant, timely, and presented in forms that can be understood, it is impossible for poor people to take effective action. Information dissemination does not stop with the written word, but also includes group discussions, poetry, storytelling, debates, street theatre, and soap operas—among other culturally appropriate forms—and uses a variety of media including radio, television and the Internet. Laws about rights to information and freedom of the press, particularly local press in local languages, provide the enabling environment for the emergence of informed citizen action. Timely access to information in local languages from independent sources at the local level is particularly important, as more and more countries devolve authority to local government.

Most investment projects and institutional reform projects, whether at the community level or at the national or global level, underestimate the need for information and underinvest in information disclosure and dissemination. Critical areas include information about rules and rights to basic government services, about state and private sector performance, and about financial services, markets, and prices. Information and communications technologies (ICT) can play important roles in connecting poor people to these kinds of information, as well as to each other and to the larger society.

 b. Inclusion and Participation

Inclusion focuses on the who question: Who is included? Participation addresses the question of how they are included and the role they play once included. Inclusion of poor people and other traditionally excluded groups in priority setting and decision making is critical to ensure that limited public resources build on local knowledge and priorities, and  to build commitment to change. However, an effort to sustain inclusion and informed participation usually requires changing the rules so as to create space for people to debate issues and participate directly or indirectly in local and national priority setting, budget formation, and delivery of basic services. Participatory decision making is not always harmonious and priorities may be contested, so conflict resolution mechanisms need to be in place to manage disagreements. Sustaining poor people’s participation in societies with deeply entrenched norms of exclusion or in multi ethnic societies with a history of conflict is a complex process that requires resources, facilitation, sustained vigilance, and experimentation. The tendency among most government agencies is to revert to centralized decision making, to hold endless public meetings without any impact on policy or resource decisions. Participation then becomes yet another cost imposed on poor people without any returns. Participation can take different forms. At the local level, depending on the issue, participation may be:

• Direct;

• Representational, by selecting representatives from membership-based groups and associations;

• Political, through elected representatives;

• Information-based, with data aggregated and reported directly or through intermediaries to local and national decision makers.

• Based on competitive market mechanisms, for example by removing restrictions and other barriers, increasing choice about what people can grow or to whom they can sell, or by payment for services selected and received.

 c. Accountability

Accountability refers to the ability to call public officials, private employers or service providers to account, requiring that they be answerable for their policies, actions and use of funds. Widespread corruption, defined as the abuse of public office for private gain, hurts poor people the most because they are the least likely to have direct access to officials and the least able to use connections to get services; they also have the fewest options to use private services as an alternative.

There are three main types of accountability mechanisms: political, administrative and public. Political accountability of political parties and representatives is increasingly through elections. Administrative accountability of government agencies is through internal accountability mechanisms, both horizontal and vertical within and between agencies. Public or social accountability mechanisms hold government agencies accountable to citizens. Citizen action or social accountability can reinforce political and administrative accountability mechanisms. A range of tools exist to ensure greater accounting to citizens for public actions and outcomes. Access to information by citizens builds pressure for improved governance and accountability, whether in setting priorities for national expenditure, providing access to quality schools, ensuring that roads once financed actually get built, or seeing to it that medicines are actually delivered and available in clinics. Access to laws and impartial justice is also critical to protect the rights of poor people and pro-poor coalitions and to enable them to demand accountability, whether from their governments or from private sector institutions. Accountability for public resources at all levels can also be ensured through transparent fiscal management and by offering users choice in services. At the community level, for example, this includes giving poor groups choice and the funds to purchase technical assistance from any provider rather than requiring them to accept technical assistance provided by government. Fiscal discipline can be imposed by setting limits and reducing subsidies over time. Contractor accountability is ensured when poor people decide whether the service was delivered as contracted and whether the contractor should be paid. When poor people can hold providers accountable, control and power shifts to them.

 d. Local Organizational Capacity

Since time immemorial, groups and communities have organized to take care of themselves. Local organizational capacity refers to the ability of people to work together, organize themselves, and mobilize resources to solve problems of common interest. Often outside the reach of formal systems, poor people turn to each other for support and strength  to solve their everyday problems. Poor people’s organizations are often informal, as in the case of a group of women who lend each other money or rice. They may also be formal, with or without legal registration, as in the case of farmers’ groups or neighborhood clubs.

Around the world, including in war-torn societies, the capacity of communities to make rational decisions, manage funds, and solve problems is greater than generally assumed. Organized communities are more likely to have their voices heard and their demands met than communities with little organization. Poor people’s membership-based organizations may be highly effective in meeting survival needs, but they are constrained by limited resources and technical knowledge. In addition, they often lack bridging and linking social capital, that is, they may not be connected to other groups unlike themselves or to there sources of civil society or the state. It is only when groups connect with each other across communities and form networks or associations—eventually becoming large federations with a regional or national presence—that they begin to influence government decision making and gain collective bargaining power with suppliers of raw materials, buyers, and financiers. Local organizational capacity is key for development effectiveness.

Poor people’s organizations, associations, federations, networks, and social movements are key players in the institutional landscape. But they are not yet a systematic part of the Bank’s analytical or operational work in the public or the private sector or in most sectorial strategies.