Jonathan Fox
Jonathan Fox is a professor in the School of International Service at American University, where he directs the Accountability Research Center - an action-research incubator
Address: School of International Service
American University
4400 Massachusetts Ave NW
Washington DC 20016
Address: School of International Service
American University
4400 Massachusetts Ave NW
Washington DC 20016
less
Related Authors
InterestsView All (27)
Uploads
Articles by Jonathan Fox
enable agroecological transitions? Mexico’s recent agricultural
policy priorities shifted from larger, irrigated farmers to focus
mainly on rainfed smallholders. Recent national policies emphasize
both food self-sufficiency and agroecological goals. Yet
government funding for conventional agriculture also continued
– including the national scaling up of a program that
delivered free chemical fertilizer to smallholders. This study
uses institutional analysis to analyze this program from the
perspective of a state-wide farmer-led oversight campaign led
by advocates of sustainable agriculture. Community-based policy
monitoring combined with multi-level advocacy broadened
access to the program and reduced corruption, while also calling
for biofertilizer options and investment in soil health.
in aid recipient countries—has become a top priority for international
development. The United States Agency for International
Development (USAID) pledged to raise the proportion of direct funding
to national organizations to 25% and for 50% of funding to involve
“locally led” input. Independently, USAID commits to proactive disclosure
of project information. This study analyses sectoral priorities,
access to project data, and localization trends to inform policy discussion
about how USAID can reach its twin localization goals, with a
focus on Colombia, the largest US aid recipient in Latin America.
Purpose: An open government perspective can shed light on whether
and how development agencies are making progress towards localization.
Moreover, user-centred information disclosure by donors is necessary to
inform locally led development. The goals of this study are to document
USAID's sectoral funding priorities, gaps in data disclosure, implementation
actions, and direct local funding percentages to make patterns more
visible to stakeholders. We ask: What are the strengths and limitations of
public disclosure of data concerning US aid in Colombia?
Approach and methods: This analysis uses open-source data review
methods to bring together different sources of publicly available data.
These methods include triangulating government data disbursed
across multiple sites, recoding government data to make trends visible,
and identifying barriers to data access.
Findings: Public data indicate that US funding for peace-related
projects increased in the years following Colombia's 2016 Peace Accord, though the security share of total US aid remains high. Funding trends demonstrate that USAID is far behind its localization goals in Colombia, though absolute funding totals to local organizations are increasing. Finally,
publicly available project data are not user-centred, require technical acumen to access, and are fragmented across multiple sites.
Policy implications: User-centred disclosures are key to locally led
development to ensure informed participation and accountability to
stakeholders.
them and decide on next steps—whether to intensify efforts or back off; continue the same strategy or make adjustments. This paper presents a framework to help accountability advocates and practitioners interpret government reactions to their efforts and move forward appropriately. The framework arises from learning and reflection in the context of the International Budget Partnership (IBP)’s Strengthening Public Accountability with Results and Knowledge (SPARK) program. SPARK seeks to bolster the collective agency of marginalized communities and coalitions to advance democratic and equitable fiscal governance systems that channel public resources to services that address the priority needs of these historically excluded groups. The paper does the following:
• Unpacks the broad umbrella category of government responses to citizen-led accountability initiatives, discerning within it three overlapping categories of responses, responsiveness, and accountable responsiveness
(RRA), and pinpointing what distinguishes them.
• Maps out the public financial management (PFM) system as the critical conduit for any public service to progress from non-response through these three categories, reflecting the terrain and priorities of the SPARK program and IBP more broadly. Looking at RRA in the context of this PFM map offers key insights for the twin tasks of tracing and unblocking bottlenecks in resource management systems that hinder responsiveness and accountability, as well as demanding specific reforms that make the fiscal governance system more open to citizen engagement.
• Discusses how the RRA framework can be used to take stock of partial or incremental responses and assess whether change is moving towards accountable governance by reference to the SPARK program and other IBP efforts. The RRA framework supports accountability-claiming practice by facilitating close attention to the actions of and influences on key government stakeholders, careful interpretation of these, and consequential adjustments to advocacy strategies. Its implications for monitoring, evaluating, and learning (MEL) from practice are also significant. MEL has been evolving in the accountability field in line with the thinking and practical challenges behind the development of the RRA framework. The framework adds to a range of emerging approaches that support the application theories of change, evidence-based adaptive programming, and politically aware systems thinking in the complex task of building accountable responsiveness towards constituencies historically excluded from public goods and services, and ultimately equitable development outcomes from an intersectional perspective.
affect public health, the work of rural activists defending their
communities’ rights to health, land, and gender, ethnic and
environmental justice demonstrate how intersectional analysis can
be put into practice. In the interviews that follow, Guatemalan
Maya Tz’utujil activists Paulina Culum and Benilda Batzin describe
how ‘health rights defenders’ seek justice for rural indigenous
communities – work that the pandemic makes more critical than
ever. Their strategies and insights have implications for addressing
rural health rights around the world.
and shared collective identities. These social foundations constitute the basis of migrant civil society, which emerges in locally grounded public spaces that extend across national borders and expresses migrants’ capacity for self-representation in the public sphere. Simply put, “migrant civil society” refers to migrant-led membership organizations and public institutions. Specifically, it includes four arenas of collective actors and actions: migrant-led membership organizations, migrant-led nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), autonomous public spaces such as large-scale cultural or political gatherings, and migrant-led media.
both top-down, technocratic control initiatives and bottom‑up efforts to
challenge the abuse of power and promote equity. The main proposition is that communicating accountability strategies should rely on conceptual and cross-cultural translation rather than awkward attempts at direct linguistic translation. To illustrate how accountability keywords are both politically constructed and contested, this article briefly reflects on the origins, circulation, and transformation of six relevant terms: transparency, the right to know, whistle-blower, advocacy, openwashing, and social accountability – including reflections from accountability advocates from Pakistan, Guatemala, and the Philippines. The conclusion calls for a two-track approach to communicate public accountability strategies, which involves (1) searching within popular cultures to find existing terms or phrases that can be repurposed, and (2) inventing new discourses that communicate ideas about public accountability that resonate with culturally grounded common-sense understandings.
communications technology (ICT) platforms to project citizen voice to
improve public service delivery. This meta-analysis focuses on empirical
studies of initiatives in the global South, highlighting both citizen
uptake (‘yelp’) and the degree to which public service providers respond
to expressions of citizen voice (‘teeth’). The conceptual framework
distinguishes two roles played by ICT-enabled citizen voice: informing
upwards accountability, and bolstering downwards accountability through either individual user feedback or collective civic action. This distinction between the ways in which ICT platforms mediate the relationship between citizens and service providers allows for a precise analytical focus on how different dimensions of such platforms contribute to public sector responsiveness. These cases suggest that while ICT platforms have been relevant in increasing policymakers’ and senior managers’ capacity to respond, most of them have yet to influence their willingness to do so.
Co-authors: Madeleine Fairbairn, Jonathan Fox, S. Ryan Isakson, Michael Levien, Nancy Peluso, Shahra Razavi, Ian Scoones & K. Sivaramakrishnan
enable agroecological transitions? Mexico’s recent agricultural
policy priorities shifted from larger, irrigated farmers to focus
mainly on rainfed smallholders. Recent national policies emphasize
both food self-sufficiency and agroecological goals. Yet
government funding for conventional agriculture also continued
– including the national scaling up of a program that
delivered free chemical fertilizer to smallholders. This study
uses institutional analysis to analyze this program from the
perspective of a state-wide farmer-led oversight campaign led
by advocates of sustainable agriculture. Community-based policy
monitoring combined with multi-level advocacy broadened
access to the program and reduced corruption, while also calling
for biofertilizer options and investment in soil health.
in aid recipient countries—has become a top priority for international
development. The United States Agency for International
Development (USAID) pledged to raise the proportion of direct funding
to national organizations to 25% and for 50% of funding to involve
“locally led” input. Independently, USAID commits to proactive disclosure
of project information. This study analyses sectoral priorities,
access to project data, and localization trends to inform policy discussion
about how USAID can reach its twin localization goals, with a
focus on Colombia, the largest US aid recipient in Latin America.
Purpose: An open government perspective can shed light on whether
and how development agencies are making progress towards localization.
Moreover, user-centred information disclosure by donors is necessary to
inform locally led development. The goals of this study are to document
USAID's sectoral funding priorities, gaps in data disclosure, implementation
actions, and direct local funding percentages to make patterns more
visible to stakeholders. We ask: What are the strengths and limitations of
public disclosure of data concerning US aid in Colombia?
Approach and methods: This analysis uses open-source data review
methods to bring together different sources of publicly available data.
These methods include triangulating government data disbursed
across multiple sites, recoding government data to make trends visible,
and identifying barriers to data access.
Findings: Public data indicate that US funding for peace-related
projects increased in the years following Colombia's 2016 Peace Accord, though the security share of total US aid remains high. Funding trends demonstrate that USAID is far behind its localization goals in Colombia, though absolute funding totals to local organizations are increasing. Finally,
publicly available project data are not user-centred, require technical acumen to access, and are fragmented across multiple sites.
Policy implications: User-centred disclosures are key to locally led
development to ensure informed participation and accountability to
stakeholders.
them and decide on next steps—whether to intensify efforts or back off; continue the same strategy or make adjustments. This paper presents a framework to help accountability advocates and practitioners interpret government reactions to their efforts and move forward appropriately. The framework arises from learning and reflection in the context of the International Budget Partnership (IBP)’s Strengthening Public Accountability with Results and Knowledge (SPARK) program. SPARK seeks to bolster the collective agency of marginalized communities and coalitions to advance democratic and equitable fiscal governance systems that channel public resources to services that address the priority needs of these historically excluded groups. The paper does the following:
• Unpacks the broad umbrella category of government responses to citizen-led accountability initiatives, discerning within it three overlapping categories of responses, responsiveness, and accountable responsiveness
(RRA), and pinpointing what distinguishes them.
• Maps out the public financial management (PFM) system as the critical conduit for any public service to progress from non-response through these three categories, reflecting the terrain and priorities of the SPARK program and IBP more broadly. Looking at RRA in the context of this PFM map offers key insights for the twin tasks of tracing and unblocking bottlenecks in resource management systems that hinder responsiveness and accountability, as well as demanding specific reforms that make the fiscal governance system more open to citizen engagement.
• Discusses how the RRA framework can be used to take stock of partial or incremental responses and assess whether change is moving towards accountable governance by reference to the SPARK program and other IBP efforts. The RRA framework supports accountability-claiming practice by facilitating close attention to the actions of and influences on key government stakeholders, careful interpretation of these, and consequential adjustments to advocacy strategies. Its implications for monitoring, evaluating, and learning (MEL) from practice are also significant. MEL has been evolving in the accountability field in line with the thinking and practical challenges behind the development of the RRA framework. The framework adds to a range of emerging approaches that support the application theories of change, evidence-based adaptive programming, and politically aware systems thinking in the complex task of building accountable responsiveness towards constituencies historically excluded from public goods and services, and ultimately equitable development outcomes from an intersectional perspective.
affect public health, the work of rural activists defending their
communities’ rights to health, land, and gender, ethnic and
environmental justice demonstrate how intersectional analysis can
be put into practice. In the interviews that follow, Guatemalan
Maya Tz’utujil activists Paulina Culum and Benilda Batzin describe
how ‘health rights defenders’ seek justice for rural indigenous
communities – work that the pandemic makes more critical than
ever. Their strategies and insights have implications for addressing
rural health rights around the world.
and shared collective identities. These social foundations constitute the basis of migrant civil society, which emerges in locally grounded public spaces that extend across national borders and expresses migrants’ capacity for self-representation in the public sphere. Simply put, “migrant civil society” refers to migrant-led membership organizations and public institutions. Specifically, it includes four arenas of collective actors and actions: migrant-led membership organizations, migrant-led nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), autonomous public spaces such as large-scale cultural or political gatherings, and migrant-led media.
both top-down, technocratic control initiatives and bottom‑up efforts to
challenge the abuse of power and promote equity. The main proposition is that communicating accountability strategies should rely on conceptual and cross-cultural translation rather than awkward attempts at direct linguistic translation. To illustrate how accountability keywords are both politically constructed and contested, this article briefly reflects on the origins, circulation, and transformation of six relevant terms: transparency, the right to know, whistle-blower, advocacy, openwashing, and social accountability – including reflections from accountability advocates from Pakistan, Guatemala, and the Philippines. The conclusion calls for a two-track approach to communicate public accountability strategies, which involves (1) searching within popular cultures to find existing terms or phrases that can be repurposed, and (2) inventing new discourses that communicate ideas about public accountability that resonate with culturally grounded common-sense understandings.
communications technology (ICT) platforms to project citizen voice to
improve public service delivery. This meta-analysis focuses on empirical
studies of initiatives in the global South, highlighting both citizen
uptake (‘yelp’) and the degree to which public service providers respond
to expressions of citizen voice (‘teeth’). The conceptual framework
distinguishes two roles played by ICT-enabled citizen voice: informing
upwards accountability, and bolstering downwards accountability through either individual user feedback or collective civic action. This distinction between the ways in which ICT platforms mediate the relationship between citizens and service providers allows for a precise analytical focus on how different dimensions of such platforms contribute to public sector responsiveness. These cases suggest that while ICT platforms have been relevant in increasing policymakers’ and senior managers’ capacity to respond, most of them have yet to influence their willingness to do so.
Co-authors: Madeleine Fairbairn, Jonathan Fox, S. Ryan Isakson, Michael Levien, Nancy Peluso, Shahra Razavi, Ian Scoones & K. Sivaramakrishnan
agrarian community leaders contributed to improving a large-scale free fertilizer program, targeted at smallholders.
In 2019, the newly-elected federal government took over a state government subsidy program that had been
synonymous with clientelism and corruption, promising to clean it up and include access to organic fertilizer.
When the program’s historic deficiencies persisted during its first year of transition to federal management, farmers
responded with widespread, confrontational protest.
To address this chaotic situation, veteran activists and community leaders from across the state transformed protest
into proposals, launching a participatory, statewide monitoring and advocacy campaign with the Guerrero Network
of Ejido and Communal Commissioners.
The campaign advocated for the validation of program beneficiary rosters in community assemblies, based on
federal agrarian law, also using the official public information request system. It helped to ensure the distribution of
fertilizer to smallholder farmers, reduced diversion of fertilizer for corrupt or electoral purposes, and promoted more
inclusion of women and indigenous smallholders.
Despite these achievements, the Network’s proposals for transparency, peasant participation, accountability,
and agroecological transition were rejected by the government officials responsible for the fertilizer program.
In response, the campaign coordinators shifted their focus to other government agricultural programs and
coordinated with agrarian leaders in other states to launch their own advocacy platforms.
This organizing process led to the second Campesino Convention of Guerrero, which included participation of
agrarian leaders from a dozen other states, followed by regional meetings and state conventions in half of the
country’s states. On April 10, 2023, five thousand agrarian leaders gathered in Mexico City for the First National
Agrarista Convention.
Reflections on this experience include:
• The focus of the farmer oversight campaign on immediately felt needs generated social energy and inspired a
new organizing strategy.
• The state-wide mobilization to promote better fertilizer delivery was grounded in revitalized civic life in historic
local participatory governance institutions that were created following the Mexican Revolution. Elected leaders
of these ejidos and agrarian communities gave the campaign both scale and legitimacy.
• Though mainly driven by grassroots organizing, the farmer oversight campaign also used technical open
government tools.
• The campaign combined the monitoring of agricultural programs and local problem-solving with social
mobilization, scaling up advocacy for greater recognition of peasant movement oversight to the national level.
(RdC), tienen el potencial de producir cambios institucionales más duraderos cuando están enfocadas a
atender no sólo las consecuencias de una deficiente RdC, sino sus causas, y cuando además orientan sus
esfuerzos hacia la incidencia en la toma de decisiones en estructuras de poder en múltiples niveles de gobierno,
y no únicamente en el ámbito local. El presente Documento Temático [Issue Paper] analiza una iniciativa
de integración vertical para el monitoreo y la incidencia pública desde la sociedad civil. Se entiende por
“integración vertical” las interrelaciones entre actores locales, subnacionales, nacionales e internacionales.
El presente documento ofrece un diálogo entre dos perspectivas complementarias: una visión panorámica
de tipo académico sobre el enfoque estratégico denominado “integración vertical”, organizado en torno
a cinco propuestas, en diálogo con un análisis profundo y detallado, desde la práctica, sobre la iniciativa
“Conteo de Libros de Texto” (Textbook Count) realizada por una coalición de organizaciones civiles en
Filipinas. Dicha coalición llevó a cabo de manera exitosa un monitoreo independiente del sistema de
contratación, producción y entrega de libros de texto por parte del sector educativo de ese país, en estrecha
colaboración con funcionarios públicos reformistas. Los hallazgos de este análisis tienen implicaciones
para entender la dinámica de las coaliciones entre organizaciones civiles y sociales, así como para aclarar la
diferencia entre monitoreo e incidencia pública. Finalmente, se incluye un apartado de recomendaciones
que sugieren que una mejor coordinación entre los donantes que otorgan apoyos a la sociedad civil podría
crear oportunidades para iniciativas más integradas, aprovechando puntos de entrada críticos, centrados
en determinados sectores. La facilitación del diálogo entre diferentes actores y el apoyo a estrategias de
implementación más prolongadas también pueden lograr articular el monitoreo y la incidencia.
To inform more strategic approaches and to identify the drivers of more sustainable institutional change, fresh analytical work is needed. This paper makes the case for one among several possible strategic
approaches by distinguishing between “scaling up” and “taking scale into account”. This proposition grounds an explanation of the vertical integration strategy, which involves multi-level coordination by civil society organisations of policy monitoring and advocacy, grounded in broad pro-accountability constituencies. To spell out how this strategy can empower proaccountability actors, the paper contrasts varied terms
of engagement between state and society, proposing a focus on collaborative coalitions as an alternative to the conventional dichotomy between confrontation and constructive engagement. The paper grounds this discussion by reviewing the rich empirical terrain of existing multi-level approaches, summarizing nine cases – three each in three countries – to demonstrate what can be revealed when TPA initiatives are seen through the lens of scale. It concludes with a set of
broad analytical questions for discussion, followed by testable hypotheses proposed to inform future research agendas.
produce more lasting institutional change, compared to locally-bounded initiatives that address the
symptoms rather than the underlying causes of accountability failures. Vertically integrated civil society
policy monitoring and advocacy initiatives involve inter-relationships between local, subnational, national
and international actors. The research combines two complementary perspectives: a scholar’s overview of
this strategic approach, including five propositions on vertical integration, in dialogue with a practitioner’s
in-depth analysis of Textbook Count in the Philippines, a civil society coalition which, in partnership
with government reformers, provided independent monitoring of an entire supply chain in the education
sector. The analysis addresses the implications of vertical integration for civil society coalition dynamics,
and the distinction between independent policy monitoring and advocacy. The conclusions suggest that
better donor coordination of civil society support can create opportunities for more integrated initiatives,
taking advantage of critical entry points provided by sector-specific approaches. Facilitating dialogue
between different actors and supporting longer implementation strategies can also advance integrated
monitoring and advocacy.
a precise analytical focus on how different dimensions of such platforms contribute to public sector responsiveness. These cases suggest that while ICT platforms have been relevant in increasing policymakers’ and senior managers’ capacity to respond, most of them have yet to influence their willingness to do so.
•Conceptual framework for connecting the dots
•Five concrete case study summaries of CSO strategies to connect the dots
•Workshop rapporteur’s report with insights organized around 8 key takeaway points
de fertilizantes gratuitos dirigido a productores campesinos.
En 2019, el recién electo gobierno federal se hizo cargo del programa de fertilizante subsidiado que operaba el gobierno de Guerrero, y que era sinónimo de clientelismo y corrupción. El nuevo presidente prometió limpiarlo e incluir, además, fertilizantes orgánicos. Debido a que en el primer año de administración federalizada del Programa las deficiencias históricas persistieron, los agricultores reaccionaron con protestas generalizadas.
Para transformar esta situación de caos y mejorar el programa, en 2020, activistas y autoridades agrarias comunitarias de todo el estado impulsaron una campaña de vigilancia e incidencia a través de la recién creada Coordinadora de Comisariados Ejidales y Comunales de Guerrero.
La campaña impulsó la validación de las listas de beneficiarios en asambleas comunitarias, realizadas en el marco de la Ley Agraria federal; usó también el sistema oficial de solicitudes de información pública; y contribuyó a que la distribución de fertilizantes fuera más eficaz, que se redujera el desvío del insumo para fines facciosos o electorales y que el programa se ampliara a más mujeres e indígenas. Sin embargo, los responsables gubernamentales del Programa de Fertilizantes rechazaron las propuestas de los comisariados en materia de transparencia, participación campesina, rendición de cuentas y transición agroecológica.
Frente a este obstáculo, la Coordinadora de Comisariados Ejidales y Comunales extendió su campaña a otros programas agrícolas federales (Sembrando Vida, Precios de Garantía, y Producción para el Bienestar); y animó a líderes agrarios en otros estados del país a organizar sus propias convergencias estatales. Hacia finales del 2021, la Coordinadora de Comisariados convocó a la segunda Convención Campesina de Guerrero, a la que también acudieron representantes de otros estados del país. Secundando la experiencia guerrerense se realizaron encuentros regionales y convenciones estatales en la mitad de los estados del país. Y el 10 de abril del 2023, justo en el 104avo aniversario del asesinato del agrarista Emiliano Zapata, cinco mil líderes agrarios se reunieron en la Ciudad de México para celebrar la Primera Convención Nacional Agrarista.
Entre las reflexiones de esta experiencia de monitoreo e incidencia campesina, se destacan las siguientes:
• La campaña de contraloría campesina en Guerrero, al centrar sus acciones en las necesidades sentidas de los agricultores, liberó una energía social que generó un nuevo paradigma organizacional en el campo mexicano.
• La movilización social regeneró la vida cívica de ejidos y comunidades agrarias en Guerrero—instituciones locales de gobernanza territorial surgidas de la Revolución Mexicana de 1910–1917, proporcionándole escala y legitimidad.
• Aunque la campaña se impulsó esencialmente a ras de tierra (en los núcleos agrarios), también se cristalizó en reuniones regionales y estatales. La contraloría campesina se sirvió de herramientas técnicas para acceder a información pública referida al programa.
• La campaña combinó la contraloría al programa de fertilizantes con la movilización social, resolviendo problemas locales y escalando la incidencia campesina al ámbito nacional.
municipalities with low levels of international migration dependency. To observe the size and behavior of the rural population still living in high poverty and low migration municipalities, we created a municipal rurality
index including all those municipalities where at least 50 per cent of its total population still lives in localities with less than 5,000 inhabitants. This comparative exercise shows that migration intensity indexes between 2000 and 2010 increased in 879 municipalities, representing 36% of the total rural municipalities in the country. At the same time, contrary to multiple expectations,
the rural population also increased in absolute terms between 2000 and 2010 in municipalities with different migratory intensity indexes. Between 2000 and 2010, the fraction of the rural population living in municipalities combining low and very low levels of migratory intensity with high and very high poverty indexes decreased from 43 to 22 percent. In absolute
terms, while 54% of the national rural population still lives in municipalities with low international migration dependency, this hardest rural population core with a limited dependency to international migration is concentrated mainly in the states of Veracruz, Chiapas, Estado de México, Oaxaca and Puebla, an important factor to inform potential initiatives to protect the
right not to migrate.