Introduction

Our Strengthening Public Accountability for Results and Knowledge (SPARK) program works with grassroots civic movements who represent people directly affected by service delivery failures. We support them in uncovering the fiscal governance causes of – and solutions to – those problems. In a three-part learning series, we explore how SPARK has built the capabilities of grassroots groups to collectively engage with fiscal governance systems – the politics, institutions, policies, and processes that govern the use of public funds and how they are utilized and implemented accountably to provide services.

In this note, we consider the ways in which we have supported grassroots groups – from smallholder women farmers to people with disabilities to women seeking better maternal health – to forge informal coalitions with civic groups that can broaden their expertise and base of support, and identify allies like government officials, auditors, legislators, the media, and others who may share their goal of strengthening accountability of public spending.

Lesson 1: Grassroots groups can lead effective budget coalitions with support and backing

SPARK coalition-building efforts provided a unique proposition by bringing grassroots groups and budget groups together, often for the first time, for concerted budget advocacy. When we began, we found that there were limited efforts and collaborations to bring budget analysis into grassroots groups’ demands to government. We sought to change the status quote by fostering an enabling environment whereby winning coalitions – centering grassroots groups – could lead to more transformative changes.

Grassroots groups retain a crucial front-facing role in SPARK coalitions. They bring the numbers and the lived experience to illustrate how public finance decisions translate into what is delivered for real people on the ground. They ‘own’ the issue, drive the agenda, and present their concerns and analysis directly to decisionmakers.

As our country programs began building these coalitions, they assessed each grassroots partner’s strengths, weaknesses, expertise, connections, and structure and then decided which allies could fill the gaps. At the start of each program, we brought in one or several budget groups who could provide crucial expertise to help the grassroots groups identify the service gaps their community faced, and to propose solutions. These budget groups have played a critical role as very few of our grassroots partners had any budget experience.

Our staff carefully manage relationships to ensure coalition-building efforts remain at the service of the grassroots partner, and the campaigns advance their priorities. Coalition members with budget analysis skills and longstanding access to spaces where public finance management (PFM) decisions are made have been vital, but their primary role is to serve as enablers for grassroots groups to have their experiences heard by decisionmakers.

As campaigns have developed new needs, the coalitions have made tactical and instrumental choices to bring on board allies organically and incrementally. All groups that are brought on board have complementary skills to drive collective action. Each partner contributes a “special piece” to the campaigns that the others need to succeed. For instance, the Small-Scale Women Farmers Organization in Nigeria (SWOFON) has engaged beyond its core partners to bring on board other farmers’ groups that had strong numbers and journalists to raise public awareness about and support for government to prioritize the agriculture budget. Another grassroots partner in Nigeria, Community Empowerment Network (COMEN) required a budget partner that was well connected to the politics, PFM systems, and decision-making of Anambra state, rather than technical support from the Abuja-based Center for Leadership, Strategy & Development. As such, they incorporated Civil Rights Concern into their coalition, which had those skills and connections in Anambra. In Senegal, the country team found that budget partner ONG3D could provide more suitable support for grassroots partner UrbaSen on national budget allocations, but another technical partner proved to be more useful and closely aligned with UrbaSen’s agenda when it came to local campaigning and more granular service delivery problems.

Building and servicing informal but agile coalition relationships is painstaking and a key aspect of SPARK’s strategic accompaniment of grassroots groups. Country managers underestimated how challenging it would be to bring budget groups and grassroots groups together. A great deal of behind-the-scenes negotiation takes place to “stitch together” coalitions, sound out potential allies, and identify openings as well as where doors are firmly closed.

Lesson 2: Coalitions do not have to be formalized to be effective; unity can be sustained through aligned interests

Our teams describe their relationship with coalition members to be collaborative and very horizontal – each member plays an implementing role in the coalition, including our own teams. Partners coordinate but each has relationships and funding sources outside of SPARK. This informality is seen as an asset. It helps to avoid the drawbacks of more formal structures that require negotiating and maintaining strict roles, procedures, and sharing of resources and credit. Instead, coalition members work together in more adaptive ways as opportunities arise. Each campaign has a core of ongoing partners – largely but not solely funded by SPARK – that brings on board other actors in peripheral roles thanks to their position in the accountability ecosystem, connections, or technical insights. These core partners draw on their personal and institutional relationships across civil society and government to gain informal access to government allies or others in positions of power.

The ‘glue’ that binds together SPARK’s coalitions is aligned interests and mutual benefits, not funding. For instance, in Indonesia Kota Kita joined Serikat Perjuangan Rakyat Indonesia (SPRI) and its core partners early in the campaign to form the Social Protection Reform Coalition. This decision was driven by shared interests as Kota Kita saw SPRI as a potentially powerful partner with aligned aims on urban development and the needs of the urban disenfranchised.

Nationally-focused organizations find that SPARK coalitions provide an opportunity to collaborate with grassroots groups that have unique lived experiences and insights, which in turn help national groups deepen their knowledge base and credibility. For instance, in Senegal, ONG3D has found that working with informal settlement residents has given them valuable evidence of the applicability and real-life implications of their quantitative budget analysis.

Government insiders sometimes see collaboration as a means of expanding their popular support—for example the Vice-Governor of Jakarta has engaged with SPRI because he knows it represents an important constituency base of poorer residents. Officials, especially at a local level, sometimes see allying with SPARK coalitions as an opportunity to improve their technical knowledge, for example county-level sanitation technicians our coalitions engage with in Kenya.

Lesson 3: Through careful and strategic relationship management, coalitions can engage and leverage accountability ecosystem actors and their oversight powers

From the beginning, SPARK sought to complement citizen-led approaches to accountability, by engaging formal state oversight bodies. Sensitive yet strategically vital relationships with oversight actors – such as national audit offices, legislatures, and other watchdogs – has been actively managed. Coalitions choose their targets strategically based on the strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities of each country’s institutions, and how they best fill the accountability gaps identified in budget and service delivery engagements. In identifying oversight allies, the coalition for people with disabilities in Senegal, for example, deepened its relationship with the National Assembly, which it found to be more transparent than the Supreme Audit Office.

Sometimes coalitions have had to shift between collaborating and applying pressure to the actors and institutions from which they are seeking reforms. And sometimes these shifts have activated internal accountabilities. For instance, in Ghana, the communities represented by SPARK partner Wassa Association of Communities Affected by Mining started out directing their frustration at the Mineral Development Fund (MDF) until they discovered the fund was just as frustrated itself with other parts of government. The MDF subsequently became an important ally in efforts to get other parts of Ghana’s government to improve the timeliness of disbursements of funds to mining communities.

The engagement of one actor to activate another can be high-risk, especially when it leads to individuals or agencies being exposed as corrupt, inefficient, or negligent. Examples include our grassroots partner SPRI’s decision to take its audit findings to the Anti-Corruption Commission when its key ally, the Department of Social Affairs, was slow to respond. The Asivikelane campaign in South Africa, which tracks water and sanitation services for informal settlement residents, has monthly releases that can embarrass Metro officials whose goodwill is crucial to the campaign’s progress.

To move campaigns forward without damaging relationships with accountability ecosystem actors along the way, SPARK advocates need to be able to balance targeting and allying with these official actors, which requires skilful navigation.

Lesson 4: Media actors enrich coalitions by contributing to oversight and pressure for change

The media is playing a wider range of roles in SPARK and is attuned in sophisticated ways to the needs of the coalitions thanks to sustained outreach from partners and the relationships they have built with outlets and journalists. Traditional press and social media are playing a critical watchdog role both by drawing public and government attention to the problems the coalitions are lifting up and keeping it there by actively monitoring the problems or their resolution.

Journalists have provided essential training to coalition members on how to make their advocacy sharper, more visible and hard-hitting, and more likely to get into the media. They have also amplified and disseminated coalitions’ social audit findings or service monitoring data. These efforts raise public awareness around service delivery issues and make it harder for government actors to claim they are unaware of the scale or intensity of the problems.

Journalists’ involvement with SPARK coalitions has also allowed them to deepen their own investigative work. When the pandemic broke out, journalists were among the few able to travel freely in Nigeria. Our team helped SWOFON to create an effective partnership with the International Center for Investigative Reporting so that its journalists could report on the problems their women farmers faced. These investigative journalists quickly became vocal independent advocates for SWOFON’s cause. They raised public support for women farmers and showed the critical role they played feeding the nation during the pandemic. One well-positioned journalist managed to secure commitments directly from a state governor, complementing SPARK engagement efforts.

Lesson 5: Through careful negotiation, frontline workers can be valuable coalition members

SPARK coalitions have sometimes started off perceiving frontline workers as adversaries or advocacy targets, but later shifted to working with them as allies. SPARK partners have often found that frontline workers are not the decision-makers or responsible for the causes of service delivery failures. They are often victims of dysfunctional public finance systems, and unhappy with the status quo. In some cases, new, more trusting, and empathetic relationships needed to be built between community members – who had seen frontline workers as the source of problems – and the workers – who felt unjustly criticized by the community. In some cases, this has also required difficult conversations to take place, such as to address community concerns around frontline workers’ absenteeism or poor treatment of patients. In other words, the same balance between critical engagement and collaboration needs to be found with frontline workers as with other actors in government.

Working with frontline workers as part of reform coalitions has improved the targeting of campaigns, the information available through detailed insider knowledge, and the legitimacy of claims made by grassroots groups. In Nigeria, frontline health workers have been more “invisible” allies in efforts to improve primary health care facilities. In India, their active involvement in engagements with local authorities has added numerical strength to campaigns. In both cases, their engagement was important in campaigns that increased the resources available at the local level, and in India the release of payments owed to workers.

Conclusion

Following on our first learning brief on how SPARK has built grassroots groups’ collective agency, this paper has underscored the importance of building coalitions as a means to more effective campaigns for budgets and services that meet the needs of marginalized communities. Even strong grassroots actors cannot “go it alone” and bringing them together with other capable civil society organizations, media, and government allies, including oversight actors, has contributed significantly to SPARK’s outcomes. These emerging collective approaches go beyond many of the isolated, project-based efforts common in civil society in SPARK countries.

However, as we look forward, building sustainable, empowered coalitions is an objective in itself that deserves further attention. Advocacy history includes both coalitions that collapse when external funding is withdrawn, and legendary coalitions that live on in adapted forms or turn their energies and skills to new issues. There are several strategic questions for SPARK moving forward. First, what will keep grassroots groups engaged in campaigns, when they move from securing quicker improvements in service delivery to addressing issues in the PFM system that will take longer to reform? How can these coalitions keep grassroots groups engaged and front and center for as long as it takes to bring systemic change (building on the learnings that we explore in our learning brief on government engagement)? Second, how can SPARK connect grassroots groups with more allies and help them consolidate relationships not mediated by funding? Lastly, should SPARK’s strategic accompaniment focus on building the coalitions or on building the capacities of grassroots groups so they can move forward after SPARK and join and leave coalitions as circumstances dictate? These questions will be critical for SPARK coalitions to be sustainable long-term.

This brief is based on a longer Learning Note produced by Rosie McGee and Colin Anderson.

Introduction

Our Strengthening Public Accountability for Results and Knowledge (SPARK) program works with grassroots civic movements who represent people directly affected by service delivery failures. We support them in uncovering the fiscal governance causes of – and solutions to – those problems. In a three-part learning series, we explore how SPARK has built the capabilities of grassroots groups to collectively engage with fiscal governance systems – the politics, institutions, policies, and processes that govern the use of public funds and how they are utilized and implemented accountably to provide services.

In this note, we examine why government officials are motivated to respond, what prevents them from responding, and how the SPARK program has found the right entry points to leverage or create incentives to respond.

Lesson 1: Leveraging political incentives and power

Both elected officials and bureaucrats are influenced by political incentives, even if elected officials are more overtly so. The SPARK program has leveraged these incentives and mobilized the implied political power of large grassroots groups to influence government responses.

Our partners have strategically taken the political and electoral incentives of decision-makers and institutions into account to engage and secure responses from political actors. SPARK partners have been savvy in targeting individual politicians at opportune times when alignment with a large grassroots group would help advance their political prospects. In Indonesia, our program aimed its advocacy at a governor at a time when he was expected to run for President and being seen as responsive to the demands of poorer residents was important for his campaign. In Ghana, our partners used the COVID pandemic and elections to put pressure on the government to act on smallholder farmers’ demands for more assistance. In Nigeria, our partners targeted members of parliament (MPs) who were facing re-election to use their budget amendment powers to stem the federal government’s proposed cut to the agriculture budget.

SPARK programs, however, do not rely exclusively on targeting politicians directly for their support even when politicians may have powerful incentives to respond. One risk is that support is likely to be shallow, in that promises would be made but not kept, and short-lived in that access to the political actor may disappear as soon as the politician has realized a political gain (i.e., being re/elected). A second concern is that groups run the risk of their claims being dismissed as partisan when they become associated with specific politicians, or any advances made being overturned when political power changes hands. A third risk is that relying on politicians for access and influence could be met with stonewalling by bureaucrats.

Our programs often rely on the power of diverse political institutions, such as the offices of mayors, political heads of relevant sector institutions, or legislature committees, to influence government responses. In Senegal, we found that while decision-making on urban sanitation infrastructure is national, the impacts are felt locally. Having mayors’ support to engage the national ministries has been important. In Indonesia, the Anti-Corruption Commission issued instructions on COVID-19 relief packages, but evidence from our grassroots partner led them to switch the packages from in-kind food parcels to cash relief to address corruption. Our partner then advocated to the President’s Office to put pressure on ministries that were slow to respond and implement the revised instructions. In Ghana, it was important to target the national government on budget allocations to subsidized fertilizer as well as local government, including agricultural extension officers, to ensure that the subsidized fertilizer reached farmers equitably.

Lesson 2: Leveraging technical incentives with evidence and informed engagement

The SPARK program has found that government response also depends on the quality and validity of the data that partners present on service delivery issues. If the data is presented in ways that feed into existing government processes (rather than generic advocacy asks) and if it is presented to the right officials who can act on it, even if they are not as visible or high-ranking in government, then partners were more likely to see response.

Our grassroots partners have gained traction when they have been able to prove that they represent broader constituency groups, beyond a particular geography (community or district) or affiliation, with legitimate needs that government has often already committed to addressing. Through social audits, member surveys or other data collection, our grassroots partners have been able to bring credible evidence to the table on the significance and scale of the service delivery failure they were experiencing, and to bring persuasive data that decision-makers lacked. For instance, our partner in Senegal, the Federation of Associations of Persons with Disabilities, has a nationwide membership base that allows them to credibly claim to represent all people who need Equal Opportunity Cards that grant people with disabilities access to social services. As a result, the data they collected on the difficulties people with disabilities were having accessing these cards was difficult for officials to dismiss. Conversely, in South Africa, our Asivikelane campaign initially had social audit data on service delivery questioned by some city governments because it only included some communities. Eventually, as they grew their network to gather data from more informal settlements, they were able to overcome initial skepticism.

Our partners often raised awareness by having community members present evidence of service gaps or sharing photos through the press and social media. Authentic testimonies put a human face in front of decision-makers, who are often far removed from the problems. It has brought unique knowledge to the policy table about the needs, priorities, and circumstances of communities who rely on these services. In some cases, officials may have felt incentivized to respond as the testimonies were perceived or feared to influence public views on the government institution or actor.

SPARK has also garnered government responses thanks to the credibility of its diagnostic work. SPARK partners have provided precise evidence about how bottlenecks in service delivery have led to shortfalls in people receiving reliable services – whether it is that registration criteria for services is too burdensome, the money allocated for a service does not reach the agency charged with delivering, etc. SPARK has brought new insights to actors in different parts of the service delivery chain about why their policies are not working.

Bringing evidence into advocacy can help shift the credibility of grassroots groups as budget actors. These efforts have been powerful because traditionally governments did not readily expect or allow civil society organizations to ask questions about budgets and technical issues. In Senegal, the program found that bringing in women from urban groups they worked with made government uncomfortable. When the women started speaking and presented clear, technical evidence, the conversation shifted.

SPARK programs have also used comparisons to demonstrate the extent of the problems. Examples are the use of traffic lights in reporting on the state of shared sanitation facilities in different cities in South Africa, or photographic evidence that compared actual food packages against what they should be in Indonesia.

Lesson 3: The importance of public policy priorities and reputational benefits and risks

Even when presented with credible evidence from groups that are representative, officials did not always respond. We have found that government actors are most likely to respond when they perceive the service as important for their personal, institutional, or government performance, reputation, or priorities. For example, in Senegal, local officials have an incentive to deliver services reliably, because they live in local communities and must answer questions personally when services are not delivered.

When SPARK must engage officials to deliver services that they have not demonstrated interest in delivering, the programs look for a policy hook that does interest them. For instance, in Nigeria our grassroots partner made the case to protect the agriculture budget and subsidies for women farmers by arguing these investments were critical to ensuring food security during the pandemic. Creating incentive alignment through mass mobilization or media campaigns, or seeking out like-minded officials to work with, are alternative strategies when government is uninterested. Sometimes there can be financial incentives at play – politicians or officials may be concerned that service delivery could impact their ability to grow (or lose) budgets they control.

When there are clear policies in place that entitle grassroots constituents to services, officials are also more obliged and freer to respond. When specific policies are linked to specific budget allocations to provide a target service to a grassroots constituency, SPARK campaigns have an even strong lever to push officials for delivery. The reverse is also true: it is difficult to get officials to respond in the absence of clear policy and budgetary commitments.

Some officials respond because their personal value systems may be compatible with ensuring that grassroots constituents access services. These officials are important allies and if they are in powerful positions that can influence decisions about services, they are often the first port of call in our government engagements.

Lesson 4: Selecting advocacy strategies and government entry points

Governments are not homogenous – we and our partners look to find the right institution, person, advocacy approach, and windows to engage. SPARK programs take care in sequencing public versus closed-door advocacy to officials and balancing confrontational versus collaborative approaches. As explored in our learning note on coalitions, our partners often leverage the media or public rallies to raise awareness and support for their issues. But other times they may choose to not jump the gun going public with information or becoming more confrontational if a government actor is not responding. In Ghana, for example, the program has avoided publicizing information without first sharing it with officials as they have found this can be counterproductive, even if it gets a lot of attention.

Grassroots groups may also avoid more public or confrontational approaches to mitigate risks for their members. For instance, when our partners in India tried to publicize information about the persistence of manual scavenging, despite it being illegal, they were threatened by the police. They have since turned to sharing their data with legislators and providing information to the media on-background, which has garnered government responses at district and state levels.

SPARK programs often invest in building ‘insider’ relationships with specific government actors. Our programs often need to get technical messages on technical systems to specific persons that can influence technical and political decision-makers to make a change that can improve service delivery. These messages can be difficult to communicate efficiently through public, mass action. Our partners must access the inner offices of bureaucracies armed with good knowledge of who sits there, what motivates them and what powers they have, and what relationships and political factors they might exploit to get the technical changes they seek. SPARK has often seen success when partners seized windows of opportunity where government actors’ incentives matched their aims, and they tailored their advocacy messages to align. On the other hand, entry points that have worked well in the past may cease when key interlocutors move on or are replaced.

Given political circumstances shift, SPARK partners have sought to sustain engagement by institutionalizing their “seat the table.” For example, in Nigeria, we helped our partner secure a space on Anambra state’s budget forum. In South Africa, our partners gained access to city government structures that monitor the effective delivery of COVID relief.

Conclusion

Our findings show that governments are persuaded to respond because our programs combine representation with quality evidence and persuasive presentation tailored to different actors. As explored in the first learning brief on collective agency, mobilizing large, representative grassroots constituencies is the starting point to create incentives for governments to respond. The political leverage brought by large numbers, the visibility of communities directly affected, and the technical evidence of why the situation has come about, together with specific technical proposals, make it more difficult for government actors to dismiss these campaigns.

Engaging governments successfully is highly context driven. What will work to trigger a response differs across countries, levels of government, services and time. We continuously scan the environment for opportunities to engage. This requires knowing individual government actors, the web of institutions in which they operate, their reasons to act (and how these change over time), and their reach on the levers of change. SPARK campaigns rarely rely on one entry point to government, or rarely use only direct advocacy to officials, or only public advocacy. We and our coalition partners have found that we must work with multiple government partners at the same time and can use power dynamics between institutions to get the responses we seek.

We have also found government actors respond more easily when the service is relevant to their personal, institutional or government performance in the prevailing political context. Our programs have faced hurdles when neither the service in question, nor the grassroots group, has political currency. In these instances, leveraging media advocacy, and seeking out powerful allies (as discussed in our second learning brief on coalitions) are critical to improve services or at least deter backsliding.

This brief is based on a Learning Note produced by Alta Folscher.