title: Assessing the impact of governance programmes: GIZ support to citizen participation in local governance in Benin
Creators: name: Groß, Lisa
Publisher: name: German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE)
publisherIdentifier: https://ror.org/01t3zke88
publisherIdentifierScheme: ROR
Year: 2018
Subjects: subject: Governance
subject: Wirksamkeit
subject: Evaluierung
subject: Dezentralisierung
subject: Bürgerbeteiligung
subject: Demokratisierung
subject: Governance
subject: Effectiveness
subject: Evaluation
subject: Decentralization
subject: Citizen Participation
subject: Democracy Promotion

description: How can we assess impact in governance programmes? This publication provides an exemplary
 impact assessment of a decentralisation programme in Benin. It analyses whether and how
 external support to citizen participation contributes to the quality of public services
 and local governance in the context of Benins decentralisation process. The GIZ
 decentralisation programme has been supporting citizen participation since 2012, promoting
 different citizen participation formats at municipal level through low-level financial
 assistance, capacity building, accompaniment and advice to municipal authorities and civil
 society in selected partner municipalities. The study measures the effect of GIZ
 activities on the quality of selected citizen participation formats and evaluates the
 impact of these citizen participation formats on the quality of public service provision
 and local governance.
 Several recommendations can be drawn from the study for a successful promotion of citizen
 participation in decentralisation contexts:
 The promotion of citizen participation through <strong>a multi-stakeholder approach can
 increase the effectiveness of citizen participation</strong> . The example of Benin
 showed that support to citizen participation was more likely to yield improvements in
 local governance or public services where international actors had cooperated with both
 municipal authorities and civil society. 
 
 <strong>A multi-level approach </strong> in the promotion of citizen participation can
 increase the <strong>sustainability of citizen participation </strong> in
 decentralisation. International actors in Benin lobbied at national level to include
 particular citizen participation mechanisms in the legal framework and the inclusion in
 the national-level framework helped to spread citizen participation practices nationwide. 
 International actors need to make <strong>a long-term commitment </strong> in order to
 increase the <strong>sustainability of citizen participation</strong> . The example of
 Benin shows that those citizen participation mechanisms that were supported for more than
 five years were more likely to be sustained by partner municipalities, while practices
 with one-time support were less likely to be repeated. 
 The <strong>intensity </strong> of international support also makes a difference with
 regard to the <strong>quality of citizen participation </strong> mechanisms. The more
 intensive the support to a citizen participation format, the higher the quality of
 implementation regarding the application of rules and regulations. 
 To support citizen participation successfully, international actors should concentrate
 on a few mechanisms <strong>– following the motto „less is more“</strong> - and refrain
 from experimenting with a high number of approaches at the same time in order to ensure
 clear communication to the partner municipalities. Focusing on a few approaches
 facilitates the goal of building sustainable institutions.
description: Discussion Paper, 16/2018