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In this paper, we explore the use of a governance diaries methodology to investigate poor households’ interactions with authority in fragile, conflict and violence-affected settings in Mozambique. The research questioned the meanings of empowerment and accountability from the point of view of poor and marginalised people, with the aim of understanding what both mean for them, and how that changes over time, based on their experiences with governance. The study also sought to record how poor and marginalised households view the multiple institutions that govern their lives; providing basic public goods and services, including health and security; and, in return, raise revenues to fund these services. The findings show that, even if the perceptions and, with them, the concepts of empowerment and accountability that emerged do not differ significantly from those identified in the literature, in terms of action and mobilisation there are distinctions. In our research sites we found that people rarely mobilise, even faced with prevalent injustices and poor basic service provision. Many claim to be ‘unable’ to influence or force ‘authorities’ to respond to their concerns and demands.
Since long before the Covid-19 pandemic emerged in 2020, civic space has been changing all over the globe, generally becoming more restricted and hazardous. The pandemic brought the suspension of many fundamental freedoms in the name of the public good, providing cover for a deepening of authoritarian tendencies but also spurring widespread civic activism on issues suddenly all the more important, ranging from emergency relief to economic impacts. Research partners in the Action for Empowerment and Accountability (A4EA)'s Navigating Civic Space in a Time of Covid project have explored these dynamics through real-time research embedded in civil society in Mozambique, Nigeria, and Pakistan, grounded in a close review of global trends.
With the introduction of the economic reforms in the late 1980s, the opening up of the political arena and the end of the civil war in the early 1990s, the decentralization process began in Mozambique. Different research developed in recent years shows that, as is the case in other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, the impact of the decentralization reforms on the promotion of local development and the strengthening of democracy in Mozambique is modest. How can this modest impact be explained? Based on three important reforms in the decentralization process in Mozambique, namely the ‘7 million’, municipalization and decentralized provincial governance, this article seeks to answer this question by analysing how different aspects of the institutions affect the results of the reforms. The main argument in the article underlines the idea according to which the results of the decentralization reforms in Mozambique are constrained by the nature and by the operation mechanisms of the political system. Of these institutional factors/constraints, state capacity and independence from private interests, particularly political groups, stand out in the three reforms analysed throughout this article. In this context, the reforms develop according to group interests, particularly party political interests, which capture the state and use the reforms as a mechanism for maintaining and bolstering political power. In this sense, rather than being a means of improving the provision of public services and strengthening democracy, decentralization works more as an instrument for reinforcing state control and pandering to the elite. This is probably the biggest challenge decentralization is facing in Mozambique, therefore making it a fundamental issue to be taken into account in any reform in this area, within the context of strengthening democracy and promoting local development.
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