Partnering for Accountability: International Development Research Centre

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2008-02

It sounds simple. Setting accountability principles for policy research in developing regions could clearly benefit both research organizations and those affected by their work. But the process to do so may be less straightforward, say representatives of the One World Trust, a UK-based research group dedicated to strengthening the accountability of policy and decision-makers in global governance.

Michael Hammer, One World Trust Executive Director and researcher Brendan Whitty, spoke about the challenges of applying the organization’s work to research bodies, which is the focus of a new project funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). Hammer and Whitty were at IDRC’s head office in Ottawa to provide a progress report.

The One World Trust has its roots in an all-party advisory group founded in 1951 by members of the British Parliament to educate politicians and the public in the UK on global governance issues. Continuing its long-standing mission, the Trust today conducts research into the changes required within global organizations to eradicate poverty, injustice, and war, and educate and advise decision-makers in government and international institutions on opportunities for cross-sector learning and institutional reform.

IDRC’s Evaluation Unit and the One World Trust are currently partnering to adapt the latter’s Global Accountability Project (GAP) framework for use by research institutions.

The framework was developed over four years of research and stakeholder workshops by the One World Trust. It is a principles-based tool that enables organizations to develop accountability systems that take multiple stakeholders into consideration.

One World Trust’s 2006 Global Accountability Report used the GAP framework to create an index that annually measures and ranks the accountability of 30 powerful organizations from across the public, non-profit, and private sectors. Participants included the Food and Agriculture Organization, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the World Health Organization; Amnesty International, Oxfam, World Vision, and WWF International; and Dow Chemical, Microsoft, Nestlé, Toyota, and Wal-Mart, among others.

On the release of the 2007 report, Hammer stated that “Accountability makes powerful organizations more effective and legitimate. Without it, solutions to global challenges will fail. The One World Trust is looking forward [. . . .] to continuing to work with organizations to provide tailored accountability solutions.”

The work undertaken with IDRC will see the One World Trust develop a tool, based on the Global Accountability Framework, that research institutes can use to map out their accountability relationships through an open and transparent process.

Speaking at a recent IDRC meeting, Hammer said the new project will set guidelines to help research groups ask and answer deceptively simple questions about themselves. They include defining their own accountability; deciding to whom they’re most accountable; and what they need to do to become truly accountable.

It’s in these groups’ best interests to make themselves accountable to their stakeholders, even the ones that aren’t big players, or obvious at first glance, he said, adding, “One of the things we’re saying [. . .] is that power alone should not define the terms of accountability.”

The project will build on the GAP’s original consultations with about 400 organizations, which led to the framework that zeroes in on organizations’ transparency, participation, evaluation, and complaint and response mechanisms.

Overall, the One World Trust’s work is aimed at improving the understanding of the role power plays in an increasingly interconnected and new global public sphere that accompanies economic globalization. “In the end, citizens of this world, independent of where they live, should not be simply subject to power, but be part of a relationship with global organizations and decision-makers which is just and democratic,” Hammer remarked.

“People connect across international boundaries,” he said. “In that global public sphere we see intergovernmental organizations, non-governmental organizations, and transnational corporations alongside each other, affecting the same people and engaging with each other.”

For example, he said, all three types of organizations delivered drinking water to refugees during post-tsunami reconstruction in Indonesia’s Aceh province. “The organization that has a strong relationship with me has a very strong interest in me accepting what they are offering as services.... if I feel that an organization has related to me in a good way, then I will be happy to continue my relationship with it.”

Researcher Brendan Whitty observed that it may not be clear whether a policy researcher’s greater responsibility is to policymakers, or to the people whom a policy affects on the ground. However, setting an evaluation framework for policy research suggests an ethical responsibility to the people who are ultimately affected.

Other stakeholders may exist. “If you purport to work on behalf of somebody else, what accountability mechanisms ought you have in place? What sort of participation processes should you go through before you start lobbying under their name? Most often, it’s been brought up with the question: “Who elected the NGOs?” It’s really an open question, and it’s something I’d like to take forward and investigate in the course of the research,” he said.

The challenge for members of policy communities may be in settling on degrees of responsibility for policy impacts to their different stakeholders, such as decision-makers, those affected by a policy, and those in between who bring it about.

Whitty added that while there’s a lot of literature on organizational accountability, there’s almost none balancing all stakeholders of policy-research groups. The IDRC/One World Trust project, at four months in, is still working to ground itself in the arena.

“It’s quite difficult to draw much in the way of conclusions at the moment,” said Whitty. “There’s just a series of questions.”

“The challenges, I think, when we’re going forward with the research, are going to be to capture, on the one hand, the complexity of the subject. And at the same time, to boil it down into some really practical tools that can be used by research institutes without incurring a great deal of cost, without involving resource-heavy methods,” he said.

The One World Trust will be hosting an e-forum for parties interested in the framework discussions, beginning on February 25, 2008. If you are interested in participating in this forum, please contact Brendan Whitty at bwhitty@oneworldtrust.org