Latest Resources
Check My School l A Case Study on Citizens’ Monitoring of the Education Sector in the Philippines
Article / Working Paper, Asia and the Pacific, Civil Society, Inter-Governmental OrganizationThis is report presents a case study of work being done in the Philippines -- an approach that combines on-the-ground community monitoring with ICT tools. Check My School (CMS) is a community monitoring project that aims to promote transparency and social accountability in the Philippine education sector by tracking the provision of services in public schools. The project uses a blended approach...
Inter-American Journal of Education for Democracy - The Role of Assessment in Educating Democratic Citizens - Vol 3, No 1 (2010)
Article / Working Paper, Civil Society, Democracy, Academic/Think TankAs the articles for this, the fifth issue of our journal, began to take final form, we realized that we had inadvertently compiled a “thematic section” on issues of evaluation and assessment. The fact that such a grouping of articles came together speaks to the salience of this matter for the field of practice and scholarship known as democratic citizenship education (DCE). Now more than ever, we...
Overview and Synthesis: The Political Economy of Fiscal Transparency, Participation, and Accountability around the World
Article / Working Paper, Economic Governance, Academic/Think TankThis publication brings together evidence from quantitative data and in-depth qualitative case studies. It finds that four main factors affect fiscal transparency, participation, and accountability across countries : 1) processes of political regime change and increasing political competition, 2) fiscal and economic crises, 3) corruption scandals and the media, and 4) external (...
Mapping the corruption assessment landscape
Article / Working Paper, Corruption, Global IntegrityThis paper reports on the results of a two-year stocktaking exercise to map the field of corruption assessments, undertaken as part of Transparency International’s GATEway project. Based on an analysis of more than 500 diagnostic tools, it presents some of the key trends and themes in corruption assessment work, and identifies important gaps which may need to be filled. Among other things, the...
Paper | Fuzzy sets theory and the Millennium Development Goals progress measurement in Cameroon - Munich Personal RePEc Archive
Article / Working Paper, Governance and MDG, Academic/Think TankThis paper uses the fuzzy set theory recently suggested by Cerioli and Zani (1990) and Dagum and Costa (2004) to derive a methodology to construct a Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) measurement index. Using the formulation of the index, it also derives the contribution of different attributes to the level of the progress being accomplished in achieving the MDGs. An empirical illustration,...
Parliamentary Oversight and Social Accountability
Article / Working Paper, Asia and the Pacific, Democracy, Parliament, Civil SocietyParliamentary oversight is one of the cornerstones of democracy. John Stuart Mill asserted that the most appropriate tasks of a representative body are to: oversee and clarify the government actions, compel the executive to provide explanations for its activities and jurisdiction for its deeds (Mill 1890). A comparative study by Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU 2007) defined Parliamentary...
Monitoring payments for watershed services schemes in developing countries
Article / Working Paper, Land Governance, Academic/Think TankPayments for watershed services (PWS) are schemes that use funds from water users (including governments) as an incentive for landholders to improve their land management practices. They are increasingly seen as a viable policy alternative to watershed management issues, and a means of addressing chronic problems such as declining water flows, deteriorating water quality and flooding. In some...
Assessing governance: methodological challenges
Article / Working Paper, Civil Society, Academic/Think TankThis paper focuses on the methods used for collecting data in 22 countries for the World Governance Survey (WGS). The Survey was based on the interview of a cross-section of well-informed persons (WIPs) in each country. These individuals were experienced in and informed about governance issues. The premise of this approach was that they would be able to provide the most knowledgeable ratings...
Internal Government Assessments of the Quality of Governance in China
Article / Working Paper, Asia and the Pacific, Civil Society, Academic/Think TankAuthoritarian governments produce internal assessments of the quality of governance that allow them to identify and address brewing problems before they threaten regime stability. This paper provides a theory of how the information necessary to produce such assessments is gathered. The empirical focus of the paper is on China, which is used to illustrate how information-gathering channels in...
Education | The Surprisingly Dire Situation of Children's Education in Rural West Africa: Results from the CREO Study in Guinea-Bissau (Comprehensive Review of Education Outcomes)
Africa, Article / Working Paper, Governance and MDG, Academic/Think TankWe conducted a survey covering 20% of villages with 200-1000 population in rural Guinea-Bissau. We interviewed household heads, care-givers of children, and their teachers and schools. We analysed results from 9,947 children, aged 7-17, tested for literacy and numeracy competency. Only 27% of children were able to add two single digits, and just 19% were able to read and comprehend a simple...