Lives in the Balance: Improving Accountability for Public Spending in Developing Countries

Acknowledgments

xix Transformational moments are always much easier to see in hindsight than in foresight. But we believe that we are in a transformational moment. This book has had more than a three-year gestation as we tried to understand what feels like a sea change in the potential for public accountability around the world. So many factors are now lining up. Many more countries enjoy at least partial democratic openness. The technology of information is undergoing a revolution not seen since the invention of movable type. Communication costs have been plummeting everywhere for the past decade. Openness in public budgets and freedom of information laws are gaining traction. Well educated young people have been arriving on the scene in large numbers the world over. And new sources of funds have become available internationally to support civil society organizations. In the meantime, large international organizations and bilateral donors have discovered governance and are making it an integral part of their development agendas. We hope we have succeeded in making a little bit of sense of these changes, but we had a lot of help doing so. This is one of three books that emerged from that effort. The other two are How to Improve Governance: A Framework for Analysis and Action (de Ferranti and others 2009), which develops and applies a framework for accountability that explicitly includes such civil society organizations as independent monitoring organizations, and From the Ground Up: Improving Government Performance with Independent Monitoring Organizations (Kosack, Tolmie, and Griffin 2010), which documents the work under a pilot competitive small grants program to support independent monitoring organizations in developing skills to monitor government spending and service delivery. Acknowledgments xx Acknowledgments Throughout this process, we have received comments on drafts of this book and good advice from many probing minds. While the shortcomings of what we have produced are ours alone, we would like to recognize peer reviewers and advisers who have helped us, including Myrna Alexander, Kevin Bohrer, Anil Deolalikar , Linda Frey, Tom Heller, C.R. Hibbs, Warren Krafchik, and Smita Singh. Anil Deolalikar and Warren Krafchik have been critical partners for us, with equal weight on both words—we could not have done it without them, and they were generous with their constructive criticism. Background papers commissioned for this study have been incorporated into this book. They are cited in the text and appear in the references. Thanks to Matt Andrews, Loren Becker, Anil Deolalikar, Amanda Glassman, Monica Jain, JeanJacques Lecat, Ngozi Okonjo-Iwela, Philip Osafo-Kwaako, Alfonso Sanchez, Jamil Sopher, Ray Struyk, and Vinod Vyasulu for their contributions as authors or coauthors. We are indebted also to many practitioners and academics, including our colleagues at the Brookings Institution, Results for Development, and the World Bank—a list far too long to include here—who gave seminars or sat on panels at Brookings as part of the development of the book. Others submitted to interviews as we tried to understand the landscape. Omowunmi Ladipo of the World Bank coordinated the review of public financial management and procurement assessments in Latin America and the Caribbean . Without her enthusiastic collaboration, we would not have been able to connect these financial “plumbing and wiring manuals” to governance. Her colleagues Trichur K. Balakrishnan, V.S. Krishnakumar, and Irina Luca organized a similar effort in Sub-Saharan Africa that benefited from comments by other procurement and financial management staff in the region. Bruce Ross-Larson was our coach extraordinaire on messages, content, and organization. He and his colleagues at Communications Development Incorporated , especially Meta de Coquereaumont, Christopher Trott, and Elaine Wilson, were exceptionally patient with us, conscientious, and creative in their editing and layout of the book. Tony Ody also helped us with his knowledgeable and speedy reading of a late version of the book, suggesting organizational improvements and even taking pen in hand to help edit. Alice Krupit, Kyle Peppin, and Gina Reynosa assisted the project at Brookings. They managed seminars, grantees, and travel. And they managed the manuscript itself as it grew, changed, and eventually shrank. Courtney Heck now performs that job at Results for Development. Carmen Hamaan and Anna Sant’anna helped us in the early stages to conceptualize the problem and to begin investigating organizations identifiable as Acknowledgments xxi independent monitoring organizations. They, along with Anil Deolalikar, Robert Hindle, Olivier Lafourcade, and Nick Warren, made early forays to visit organizations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America to understand...