Accountability Research Center Awarded $1Million Funding from Ford Foundation
Accountability Research Center Awarded $1Million Funding from Ford Foundation to Convene Dialogues with Social Organizations on Democratic Governance
The Ford Foundation has awarded $1 million in core funding to the to learn with and from social and civic organizations about their contributions to broadening and deepening democratic governance. Based in the School of International Service under the direction of Professor Jonathan Fox, ARC is an applied research center focused on learning, analysis, and research that can inform strategies to bolster accountable governance.
At a time of widespread global concern about the capacity of governments to deliver effectively to citizens, this initiative will bring together leaders of social and civic organizations to share their experiences. In contrast to much current global discussion about broad trends with democratic governance, this working group’s agenda will be targeted, focusing specifically on strategies for responsive governance that involve broad-based citizen engagement.
Throughout the next year, ARC will co-convene a series of learning exchanges together with a core group of civil society thought leaders from the global South with extensive experience at local, subnational, national, and global levels. Learning exchange participants will come from different sectors and countries.
“At ARC, our agendas are driven by problems and partners,” Fox noted. “Our repertoire seeks synergy between learning, convening, analysis, and research, to identify lessons learned and gaps in evidence that are relevant both to practitioners and to research agenda-setting.”
Following ARC’s emphasis on learning with and from practitioners, participants in these learning exchanges will identify forward-looking lessons from their efforts to encourage public institutions to listen and deliver to underrepresented constituencies. The agenda of the three-year project will address analytical questions that are of shared concern across constituencies and settings – such as how organized citizens can engage effectively in oversight of public service delivery, at scale; or how networks of frontline rights defenders can broaden their social base while persuading policymakers to listen.
“At ARC we recognize that many social and civic leaders are also analysts,” Fox said. “As trained academics we may have more elaborate research methods than practitioners, but scholars do not necessarily have more analytical insight than practitioners on the frontlines of change. Convening and documenting these dialogues will distil and disseminate practitioner insights, bringing their grounded perspectives to global debates on democratic futures.”