Initiatives: Research

Resources, Citizen Engagement and Democratic Local Governance: A Background Paper

This background paper was prepared by Mark Robinson, from the Institute of Development Studies, UK, for the Resources, Citizen Engagement and Democratic Local Governance (ReCitE) Project Planning Workshop, held at the South Park Hotel, Trivandrum, Kerala, from 4-16 January 2004.

The main objective of this paper is to outline the key research issues that the project seeks to investigate. In particular it focuses attention on three distinct questions where comparative knowledge and insights are thought to be limited. These are:

  The variety of ways that citizen engage in local fiscal processes.

 The power dynamics that influence the form and content of citizen engagement.

 The specific outcomes of citizen engagement, expressed in changes in fiscal priorities and expenditure allocations, and accountability relations.

The paper concludes with the key lessons and insights that emerged from these questions and suggests that the research project hopes to shed light on these issues through looking at efforts to deepen citizen engagement in fiscal processes in various local contexts.

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