Research Questions

Community Perceptions of Accountability

  1. How is ‘accountability’ understood from the perspective of individuals and communities in Cambodia in the selected communities? How does this compare to Northern notions of ‘accountability’ being employed by external bodies operating in Cambodia?
  2. How and why do notions of accountability differ within communities and across communities? How is this understanding influenced by gender, by access to education and by government norms around accountability?

 

 

Community Experiences of Overlapping Power and Accountability Systems

  1. How do communities identify and quantify impacts on their lives?
  2. Who are the bodies that individual communities can hold accountable for those impacts?
  3. How do decisions by business, aid and finance sector actors interact with each other in shaping the development opportunities of communities Oxfam works with?
  • How can the overlapping power structures which affect a given community be characterised? Which external decision makers control which kinds of outcomes, and how do multiple structures of external power interact with each other?
  • How do accountability systems associated with aid, finance and business sectors respectively interact with each other at the community level? Does fragmentation make it harder for communities to hold external actors accountable, or can effective accountability systems in one sphere spill over into empowering communities in other spheres of decision making?
  • How do NGOs that work with the communities filter and/or communicate the relationships with other development organisations, aid agencies and businesses?

 

Enabling and Constraining Conditions for Effective Community-Driven Accountability

  1. What are some of the most important recurring barriers or enabling conditions for the emergence of effective community driven accountability?
  • Which communities assess themselves as being able to hold other actors accountable more or less effectively?
  • What accountability practices and strategies do different communities use to hold each other and other entities/actors accountable?
  • What are the conditions, factors, strategies and mechanisms that have allowed some communities to hold external actors accountable more effectively than others?