Power to the People?: Learning from the Case of Citizen Voice and Action

Essential services often fail because citizens are unable to hold governments accountable. By studying the case of Citizen Voice and Action, a social accountability intervention introduced by the World Vision aid organisation, my thesis asks how impoverished citizens can be empowered to increase accountability for essential services and how to improve empowering intervention processes. Findings from twelve countries explain which citizen capabilities influence official behaviour and consequently, how to combine competing theories of accountability. Improving practice requires finding which localized cultural capabilities amplify collective power to enable change.