CITIZEN PARTICIPATION AND PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT: OPERATIONALIZING DEMOCRACY THROUGH BETTER ACCOUNTABILITY

Abstract

INTRODUCTION The purpose of this article is to examine concept of citizen in context of interface between public and government, accountability and governance process. We assert that greater involvement of citizens in designing collection, analysis, dissemination, and proper consumption of performance measurement data is a promising strategy for enhancing two important aspects of governance, namely accountability and taxpayers' satisfaction. Genuine, as different from symbolic, citizen participation, we avow, is a valuable tool for increasing trust in a government for two reasons. First, it can provide government planners and program managers a true and accurate data about taxpayers' priorities and preferences between highly desired but mutually exclusive courses of action (Tompkins, Herian and Hoppe 2010). Second, such involvement can provide program managers with important feedback about ongoing operations while boosting credibility of government's reports about various aspects of its operations. This assertion is consistent with recent proposal of Aghion, Algan, Cahuc and Shleifer (2008) that unilateral government regulation, to extent that it constrains productivity, is strongly and negatively correlated with creation of social capital. According to that proposal, the correlation works for a range of measures of social capital, from trust in others to trust in corporations and political institutions, as well as for a range of measures of regulation, from product markets to labor markets to judicial procedures. Citizen is seen in this paper as a promising way of cultivating social capital, in broad sense, given declining cost and new opportunities for such involvement as a result of developments in information technology in general and interactive forms of in particular. As noted by Kim and Kim (2010: 87), e-government can positively increase process-based trust by improving interactions with citizens and their perceptions of responsiveness. The paper starts by placing need for citizen in current reality of growing demands for accountability. As documented by several publications (Whiteley and Sanders 2005; Global Forum 1999) this reality is articulated through questions by taxpayers and media about government priorities and procedures used to attain its various objectives. The paper goes on to discuss functional aspects of citizen as a mean to increase trust, transparency and quality of data used to make decisions about service levels, procedures and priorities. The paper concludes that with citizen it is possible not only to expand on 1960's slogan maximum feasible participation for a more democratic governance process, but to affect government productivity, citizens' satisfaction, transparency and trust in government. THE CURRENT CONTEXT OF ACCOUNTABILITY AND CITIZENS' PARTICIPATION The notion that citizen is an important element of democratic governance process is not new. A case for it was argued with slogan from 1960's Maximum Feasible Participation (Moynihan 1969; Rubin 1969). Yet, it should be noted that its wide use in America during 1960's and 1970's was meant mainly to foster true democracy. For all practical purposes, it was geared to facilitate by poor and minorities that have been left out of governance process. To be sure, citizen was not intended primarily for fostering productivity, better government or accountability. The academics writings on citizen during Johnson Administration (e.g., Strange 1972) coincided with research interest about agenda setting (e.g., Bachrach and Baratz 1962) and community power (e.g., Hunter 1969). This coincidence supports our assertion that at that time citizen was used more for operationalizing concept of greater democracy through a more inclusive in decision making process than as a way of addressing issues of accountability, responsiveness, and public sector productivity. …