Action for Empowerment and Accountability Programme
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Action for Empowerment and Accountability (A4EA) is an international research programme which explores how social and political action can contribute to empowerment and accountability in fragile, conflict, and violent settings, with a particular focus on Egypt, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nigeria and Pakistan.
The programme is led by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and is being implemented by a consortium which also includes: the Accountability Research Center (USA), the Collective for Social Science Research (Pakistan), the Institute of Development and Economic Alternatives (Pakistan), Itad (UK) Oxfam (GB and Myanmar), and the Partnership for African Social and Governance Research (Kenya). It is funded by UK aid from the UK Government.Recent Submissions
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The Politics of Complaint: a Review of the Literature on Grievance Redress Mechanisms in the Global South
(Taylor & Francis Group, 2023-03-16)Institutionalized complaint systems are notable features of improving public programmes and government practice. This article reviews literature on formal grievance redress mechanisms in the global South to understand ... -
Understanding Accountability in Practice: Obligations, Scrutiny, and Consequences
(John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2022-12-30)Attempting to increase authorities' accountability for their actions has become a mainstay of development practice in recent decades. Yet commentators suggest that these efforts have reached an impasse, in part because of ... -
Citizen Action for Accountability in Challenging Contexts: What Have we Learned?
(John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2023-02-14)While much is known about how citizens mobilize and make claims for accountability in more democratic, stable, and peaceful settings, little is known about how accountability dynamics work in more challenging contexts—those ... -
What Makes “Difficult” Settings Difficult? Contextual Challenges for Accountability
(John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2022-10-22)It is increasingly common for international development actors to work in difficult and fragile settings, yet much of our understanding of accountability through social and political action comes from more stable settings. ... -
Women's Political Agency in Difficult Settings: Analysis of Evidence from Egypt, Nigeria, Mozambique, and Pakistan
(John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2023-01-04)Male gatekeeping and biased social norms in difficult settings characterized by fragility, authoritarianism, and conflict create challenges for women's political participation. This article explores the nature of challenges ... -
Celebrating Adaptive Delivery: A View from the Frontline in Myanmar
(Institute of Development Studies, 2023-02-02)The conversation on adaptive management has grown fast amongst development actors. These conversations often focus on designing, commissioning, and managing large-scale development programmes. Exactly how this impacts the ... -
Governance Diaries: An Approach to Researching Marginalized People’s Lived Experiences in Difficult Settings
(SAGE Publications, 2023-01-12)How do chronically poor and marginalized citizens interact with and make claims to the different public authorities that exist in fragile, conflict and violence-affected contexts? In other words, how does governance from ... -
Everyday Governance in Areas of Contested Power: Insights from Mozambique, Myanmar and Pakistan
(John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2022-12-05)How do poor and marginalized people solve problems and claim rights and entitlements in places affected by conflict and where state authority is contested? Understanding such processes is important as the numbers of poor ... -
International Aid Actions for Accountability: Identifying Interaction Effects Between Programmes
(John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2022-11-24)Aid agencies that support public accountability reforms commonly do so in the same places, and with similar state and civil society actors. However, the combined effects of their separate programmatic actions are rarely ... -
The Governance Shock Doctrine: Civic Space in the Pandemic
(John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2022-11-14)Emergencies heighten societies’ need to be governed. Accordingly, the COVID-19 pandemic put systems of public governance under severe pressure across the globe. Civic freedoms were widely curtailed for public health reasons. ... -
Repertoires of Citizen Action in Hybrid Settings
(John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., 2022-08-24)In recent years, a growing literature has emerged analysing how organized citizen action can achieve more accountable and inclusive governance mostly focused on relatively open, democratic or more stable contexts, often ... -
Researching Governance in Difficult Times and Places: Reflections from Mozambique, Myanmar, Nigeria and Pakistan
(John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., 2022-06-22)Fragility and closing civic space present significant challenges for research, making research processes more onerous and difficult, particularly on social and political issues. And yet these contexts may be those that may ... -
Protests and Accountability in Nigeria’s Energy Sector
(Institute of Development Studies, 2022-08-17)Since 2016, Nigerians have experienced a stable fuel supply even if prices have continued to rise. This supply stability came to a sudden halt in January 2022, bringing back memories of long queues and harsh living conditions ... -
Women’s Leadership and Political Agency in Fragile Polities
(Institute of Development Studies, 2022-06-28)Recent evidence from Afghanistan shows that even in the most difficult contexts, women will still protest for their rights. This paper draws on evidence from the Action for Empowerment and Accountability (A4EA) research ... -
Canvassing the Gatekeepers: A Field Experiment to Increase Women Voters’ Turnout in Pakistan
(Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association, 2022-05-18)How can we close persistent gender gaps in political participation? We develop a theory highlighting the role of male household members as “gatekeepers” of women’s participation in patriarchal settings and argue that the ... -
An Exploration of the Association Between Fuel Subsidies and Fuel Riots
(Elsevier Ltd, 2022-04-25)Between 2005 and 2018, 41 countries had at least one riot directly associated with popular demand for fuel. We make use of a new international dataset on fuel riots to explore the effects of fuel prices and price regimes ... -
Seeing the Combined Effects of Aid Programmes
(Institute of Development Studies, 2022-05-10)Multiple aid agencies often try to support change in the same places, at the same time, and with similar actors. Surprisingly, their interactions and combined effects are rarely explored. This Policy Briefing describes ... -
Donor Action for Empowerment and Accountability in Nigeria
(Institute of Development Studies, 2022-03-16)Multiple development actors are interested in stimulating more inclusive fiscal governance. Efforts to generate greater budget transparency, citizen participation in resource allocation, and public oversight of government ... -
Against the Odds: Action for Empowerment and Accountability in Challenging Contexts
(Institute of Development Studies, 2022-02)How and under what conditions does citizen-led social and political action contribute to empowerment and accountability? What are the strategies used, and with what outcomes, especially in settings which are democratically ... -
Algumas Notas Sobre a Acção Cívica no Contexto da COVID-19 em Moçambique
(IESE, 2022-01-11)This paper analyses how civil society organisations (CSOs) explore the possibilities that exist to undertake civic action in a context of COVID-19 in Mozambique. The analysis explores some of the strategies that CSOs use ...
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