sanction or reward public officials”.<sup>111</sup> Conceptualized as such, the most obvious mechanism for citizens to express their voice would be through free and fair elections; however, this condition would imply the existence of other non-electoral mechanisms for public participation, including civil participation in political parties, CSOs, NGOs, as well as other participatory institutions. Evidence that this condition is in place would include, _inter alia_ : evidence of political participation through free and fair elections; necessary oversight and electoral monitoring mechanisms; as well as political pluralism, including freedom of political parties, CSOs, and NGOs from discrimination, or persecution.

In order for this premise to be true, there would be a number of observable implications. First, we would expect to see higher levels of OGD produced in terms of sector performance data (e.g. in health and education) as well as higher levels of data on budget allocation and execution. Second, we would expect government accountability indicators to likewise increase over time, with a significant correlation to improvements in OGD. Finally, in line with the literature, we would expect publicity and political agency conditions to be positively and significantly correlated with increases in accountability. This premise would be falsified if either there was an inverse relationship between OGD and government accountability, or, indicators measuring publicity and political agency were not positively correlated with OGD and government accountability.

#  **_Premise 2: More accountable governments enable improved service delivery._**

According to this second premise, policy makers and elected representatives would be held accountable to respond to citizens “voice”—whether formally or informally expressed—or risk the consequences of inaction. As such, these policy makers must be able to discipline government agencies that execute the public policy directives, priorities, and initiatives that they are advocating. Moreover, each service delivery agency must be able to ensure that civil servants—including the frontline providers responsible for service delivery—are adequately rewarded/sanctioned for their performance in carrying out their delegated tasks.

While publicity and political agency are needed to translate OGD into an accountability tool, policy makers must likewise have the capacity to actually enact the policies they are seeking to implement.<sup>112</sup> However, in many developing country contexts, it is often the case that a significant “implementation gap” emerges between _de jure_ legislation, policies, or regulations and _de facto_ policy implementation. While impossible to generalize across all developing countries, such implementation gaps tend to emerge in two particular instances. The first is when politicians are not able to effectively delegate to line ministries—as their agents—to carry out policy implementation. In many developing country contexts, this is the result of competing mandates, poor coordination, unclear reporting relationships, poor prioritization, and limited institutional capacity. The second instance where implementation gaps may emerge, is at the level of the frontline service providers—that is, the doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers, sanitation workers, who physically interact with citizens in providing services. Policy implementation at this level is also prone to failure if the necessary resource allocation, human resource capacities, and performance incentives are not in place. For instance, in a context where high absenteeism is prevalent and disciplinary measures are not enforced, it is doubtful that service delivery provision and outcome targets will be reached.

Returning to the literature, both of these phenomena have been well documented empirically and theoretically. With respect to the relationship between the politicians and the line ministries they oversee, previous research highlights the importance of “compacts” with service provider organizations, such as ministries of health and education or regional hospitals or school districts. As such, policy makers are

> 111 Peixoto, “The Uncertain Relationship.”

> 112 As noted by the World Bank’s 2017 World Development Report: “Capacity, often considered a prerequisite for policy effectiveness, is certainly important, and in many cases it is even an overriding constraint...however, policies may still be ineffective if groups with enough bargaining power have no incentives to pursue implementation.” WDR 2017 (p. 11).

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