Voice, Accountability and Human Development

These days, no fiery demand for social justice – or, for that matter, sober discussion of public policy – is complete without a demand that the powerful heed the voices of ordinary people, or that ordinary people be enabled to hold the powerful to account. Over the past decade, trailing in the wake of an amorphous ‘governance agenda’, the elastic concepts of voice and accountability have come to dominate not just the development discourse, but also the language of international politics, business and activism. But the more talk there is of the importance of voice and accountability, the less these terms seem to mean, and the less relevance they appear to have for disadvantaged people. It is for these reasons that this chapter seeks to illuminate just what is meant by accountability, and to demonstrate why a commitment to genuine accountability – as opposed to initiatives that pass themselves off as such – is critical to achieving social justice, equity and a decent quality of life for the world’s poor.