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Table 2 Questions about Community-based monitoring

From: When accountability meets power: realizing sexual and reproductive health and rights

Types and sources of power among different stakeholders

 • Who determines the nature of participation by the community? What are the costs and benefits of participation? To what extent does the community itself determine the objectives and methods of the strategy?

 • Which sections of the community are included? Who is left out?

  o Are community leaders involved? Who are they (e.g., elected representatives, government officials, civil society leaders, thought leaders, large landowners/ entrepreneurs employing labour, other leaders, etc.)?

  o Are all sub-groups adequately represented across, inter alia, the gender, age, ability and socioeconomic spectrum as well as ethnic and religious groups? If some sections of the community are under- or unrepresented, why is this so?

  o What are the implications of their inclusion or exclusion for the workings of the strategy?

  o What does representation imply in terms of responsibility and transparency? Voice? Ability to demand and obtain services?

 • What types and sources of power do each of the stakeholder groups wield (e.g., access to and control over material resources, knowledge, the bureaucracy, the courts, the police, the media, elected representatives, government officials, etc.; influence over decision making affecting the community and/or the lives of others; social and/or cultural capital)?

 • Which of these individuals or groups have the power to prevent the strategy from achieving its goals? What aspects of their power must be brought to book? Their ownership and/or control over material resources? The scope of their influence over major decisions affecting the lives of others and the achievement of collective goals? The dominance of their voice and/or their authority in the community?

 • What are the interests of each of the stakeholders who are formally part of the CBM exercise? Are their interests aligned or at odds with each other? What resources can (and do) these stakeholders galvanise to protect their interests?

 • What are the interests of the stakeholders who are left out of the CBM exercise? Do these stakeholders try to influence the monitoring process and its outcome? When do they do so?

Accountability ‘artefacts’ in the strategy

 • What are the goals of CBM? Who sets these goals for the community?

 • Overall, who is responsible for implementing the strategy? What is the relationship between this individual’s office and the community?

 • What does the CBM work cycle look like? What structures (e.g., committees, groups, etc.), processes (e.g., data collection, consultations) and instruments (e.g., scorecards, etc.) are developed as part of the strategy? Which sections of the community have voice and say in the strategy’s structures, processes, instruments and work cycles? Which sections have neither voice nor say?

Accountability ‘artefacts’ in the strategy (continued)

 • How, where and by whom is information about community needs, service uptake and health outcomes (among others) gathered? Are there safeguards against misrepresentation of the facts by stakeholders who have vested interests and the power to influence others? What safeguards are these? What is the quality of the information that is gathered?

 • Who analyses the information gathered through the strategy’s structures, process, and instrument(s)? Do analytical outputs emerge from this exercise? Are these outputs reviewed and/or validated by different stakeholders/sections of society?

 • Are action plans identified based on analytical inputs? How and by whom? What types of actions?

 • How are groups that are resistant to the goals of CBM viewed by the individuals leading the effort? How are such groups handled (e.g., censured, isolated, stigmatised at one extreme to consulted to modify the strategy at the other)?

 • Are there adequate redressal mechanisms for those who are disempowered and/or adversely affected by abuses of power?

 • Who finances the CBM exercise? What does the mode of financing imply for the independence of the strategy and for the autonomy of participating stakeholders?

Incentives and disincentives to different actors and their resulting behaviour patterns

 • Do different stakeholders stand to gain or lose from the strategy? If so, what?

 • How do stakeholders respond to real or feared disempowerment due to the strategy?

 • How often and among which stakeholders are these behaviours to be found? How are such behaviours justified?

Consequences for the accountability strategy

 • What happens when controversial issues arise? Whose views prevail?

 • Who benefits and who loses from the strategy and its instrument(s)? Where? When? How? Why?

 • Who remains untouched by the strategy? How? Why?

 • Are relationships between the powerful and those who are disempowered different since the accountability strategy was introduced? How? With what effect? Why?

 • What contextual factors (moral and political economies, gender norms, and challenges linked to the claiming of rights) contribute to or prevent changed relationships?