A Realist Assessment of the Facilitation Process for Improving Social Accountability by Community Based Organizations

The poor performance by local government institutions in service delivery has contributed to the proliferation of community-based organisations (CBOs) in many African countries. This development is unfolding within the context of growth in the aspirations of people and societies for greater transparency, democracy and participatory management. Such a scenario calls for greater social accountability by CBOs. This paper applied a realist approach guided by an action research process to assess the facilitation of community scorecards in improving social accountability by CBOs using the REPAIR project in Zimbabwe as a case study. Focus was placed on understanding the generative mechanisms within specific contexts under which social accountability outcomes emanated. The paper identified key contextual drivers, generative mechanisms and key outcomes, consolidated into streams of Context-Mechanism-Output (C-M-O) configurations. The paper concludes with recommendations on the potential utility of the C-M-O configurations for future facilitation of social accountability interventions for CBOs.