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Anuradha Joshi

IDS

April 2015 Image: Zackary Canepari Panos Pictures

Seeing the Citizen(s):

State Response and Citizen-led Accountability

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State Responses to Citizen-led Accountability

Under what conditions do states respond positively to citizen demands? Why?

State responses to citizen action are not uniform The ‘state’ is not monolithic State accountabilities that are invoked can be both

legal and ‘moral’ States agents face collective action problems just as

social actors do

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Looking into the state

Need to understand the inner workings of the state

But also need to look out from inside the state—‘seeing the citizen(s)’

And need to trace the potential range of ‘invisible’ impacts of citizen-led accountability on state institutions

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Understanding state action: some entry points?

Typologies of contexts

Individual and organizational incentives, motivations

Formal and informal institutional relationships

Constructing plausible causal chains