Abstract
One of the greatest challenges for contemporary development studies is to operationalize the core values and concepts of social and political theories and reflect the experiences of developing world thereupon. Where successful, such empirical works in fact enrich and throw new light on those theories. This book concerns two such issues: accountability and citizenship. Accountability has been recognized as an important issue of public good even in the works of early democratic thinkers like Bentham and John Stuart Mill. Over last few decades, it has evinced much academic interest among social scientists from various streams, particularly economics, political science and governance. Various theories of accountability generally deal with the issues of answerability and sanctions. In the process of presenting the theory of Relational Accountability (RA), Moncrieffe, an established scholar on democratic accountability for well over a decade, introduces us to another important dimension: citizenship.
The first chapter, built on her earlier article published in Democratization, presents the fundamental theoretical tenets of accountability in detail. Locating them in the historical evolution of various democratic concepts like representation, Moncrieffe records the constraints of achieving accountability where elections are too inadequate a tool for eliciting accountability. In this context, she weaves the ‘relational approach’ – ‘a critical human- and society-centred lens to interpretations of accountability’ (p. 39). It starts from the premise that as ‘social creatures and actors’ (p. 40), individuals are embedded in their cultures – which determine their social relationships, which again, constitute their overall well-being. When loyalty grows from this premise, such citizens are unlikely to punish their governors.
The next three chapters, which form the substance of this book, specifically address the issues of citizenship. After exhaustively surveying various issues and debates on post-war citizenship literature, Moncrieffe subtly criticizes the Euro-US domination of the concept, which almost totally ignores the experiences of Oriental societies. RA believes that citizenship ‘experiences are differentiated across and within societies’ (p. 72), which influences the process of accountability. In Moncrieffe’s words, ‘histories, cultures, structures and substructures, social relationships and power dynamics...together influence how institutions perform and what accountability means in practice’ (p. 47). RA is premised on this conceptual background. These factors often prevent people from seeking accountability in substantial terms and stratification among generally disadvantaged groups of people exacerbates this syndrome. These mental and emotional ‘boundaries’, along with existing and emerging inequalities and injustices, challenge the concept of universal citizenship, which is, ‘in large part, a myth’ (p. 130).
The book is extensively built upon empirical evidences: secondary field data is drawn from Brazil, whereas Moncrieffe reflects from her own field studies conducted in Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, different parts of Uganda and most extensively, from Jamaica. Some of the field studies were conducted during her previous works. Those experiences present many interesting issues. She particularly emphasizes the conditions of children from poor and generally excluded backgrounds, often susceptible to various kinds of violence. Those experiences also point out various facets of inequalities across the continents. In African countries, they are generally the people or communities traditionally marginalized and have somewhat different anthropological features.
For children from inner-city Jamaica, the experiences of broken homes, the rather easy availability of arms, police violence and familiarity with the death of near ones (brothers, friends) reinforce their unequal citizenship, which again seriously jeopardizes their opportunities to realize accountability in meaningful terms. This happens despite the fact that mechanisms of procedural democracy such as periodic elections are quite in vogue in Jamaica. Moncrieffe makes a rigorous analysis of the prevailing school education system, where despite the impressive rate of enrolments, the in-built the inequalities render children from underprivileged backgrounds seriously circumscribed in their search to find avenues for upward mobility. She also discusses the roles of political institutions like Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) and political parties. In fact, the penultimate chapter presents the detailed profiles of various NGOs and Community Based Organizations (CBOs) working there, with both successes and limitations – experiences quite familiar in the developing world. Local people are suspicious of political parties, as well articulated by a respondent: ‘politicians know how to keep unlearned’ (p. 149). Moncrieffe should have enlightened us on what lines political mobilization does takes place, because political competition exists there. In developing countries like India, for instance, it is quite familiar that many politicians benefit from their underworld connections, but a competitive party system, social movements and high degree of mobilization sometimes enable those who are generally poor and powerless to demand accountability: for instance, the codification of the Right to Information Act is the result of social movements, chiefly launched by poor people. She also does not discuss the role of mass media in Jamaica. Her conclusions therefore, despite being quite relevant and straightforward, are also somewhat pessimistic.
The concluding chapter sums up the major arguments of the book. Generally, students of political sociology, Jamaican politics and particularly, students and researchers specializing in democratization and development studies would benefit from this book. Lucidly written, Moncrieffe successfully identifies citizenship as the key to accountability – the agenda for democratization should concentrate on realizing both. In addition, she touches on the rather neglected, duty-based aspect of citizenship. She pinpoints the necessity of citizens’ accountability to fellow citizens and the state ‘for preserving the lives and wellbeing of other members of society’ (p. 149). In the process of identifying the imperfections of realizing accountability, she also expands the notion of ‘differentiated citizenship’ which, in mainstream citizenship literature, is dominated by themes like feminism and multiculturalism: she puts forward issues like social exclusion, deprivation, violence and poverty, built upon the experiences of the developing world. Furthermore, while discussing the limitations of Civil Society Organizations in Kenya, she agrees that a change of culture is necessary to surmount client-based personalized politics for enriching representation and guaranteeing political equality. To substantiate her arguments, she sometimes listens to ‘life stories’ (p. 100) – the narratives which expose the blood-curdling realities of violence that many powerless people have to face in their everyday lives and which cannot be as vividly captured in conventional social science methodologies.