The case study examines the work of the Reproductive Health Advocacy Network (RHAN) to push for the passage of the Reproductive Health Bill, despite stiff opposition from the highly influential Catholic Church.
This case study summary looks into the advocacy campaign of the Disaster Risk Reduction Network Philippines (DRRNetPhils), which was directed at the passage, implementation and review of the 2010 Disaster Risk Reduction Management (DRRM) Act.
This case study summary reflects on some of processes, mechanisms, actors and activities at play at various stages and levels of the programme, which made it possible for civil society monitoring to cover all the Textbook Delivery Programme’s possible vulnerabilities to corruption and inefficiency. It attempts to unbundle processes at every level, and measure the intensity of the actions/tactics per level using vertical integration as a framework for analysis.
The case study focuses on the organizing efforts of two national agrarian reform networks, the Rural Poor Institute for Land and Human Rights Services (known as RIGHTS Network) and the Movement for Agrarian Reform and Social Justice (Katarungan), and their campaign with local farmers’ organizations on the Bondoc Peninsula.
This piece puts forward propositions on "doing accountability differently" through strategies that tackle power and systemic issues in order to address root causes (instead of just the symptoms) of corruption and bad governance through balanced and synergistic, multi-level and multi-actor actions on transparency, participation and accountability.
This provides background paper for a learning event on transforming governance, which presents vertical integration as “an effective way of doing accountability work because it can reveal more clearly where the main problems are, permitting more precisely targeted civil society advocacy strategies.”
In June 2015, a North-South convergence of four organizations hosted a workshop entitled “scaling accountability.” In contrast to the conventional idea of “scaling” as involving the replication of local pilots, our use of the term was intended to convey the idea of going beyond bounded projects to address systemic accountability problems.
PFMP’s technical assistance encourages transparency in government’s procurement process
This study explores whether and how Philippine open government reformers have been able to leverage the Open Government Partnership (OGP) mechanisms, processes, spaces, and assistance to improve government responsiveness and accountability.
The attempt of civil society to venture into expenditure monitoring is a huge challenge. It is a new terrain that involves technicalities and requires access to critical processes and documents of the government.
A book chapter that discusses one of the challenges to Philippine democracy – poorly regulated campaign finance – highlighting the importance of making elections inclusive and democratic by making them competitive and fair.
In the 1990s, the education sector in the Philippines faced a major crisis. The Department of Education (DepEd) was accused of extensive corruption, in particular in the field of textbooks procurement (according to Philippine law the government is obliged to provide students with free textbooks) (Ramkumar 2010). At least three forms of corruption were suspected: officials were awarding overpriced contracts to unqualified bidders, suppliers were not honoring their contracts (many textbooks remained undelivered even after the government had paid for them), and some vendors were providing books of poor quality (Ramkumar 2010).
This strategy paper is a comprehensive guide for the sustainability of CSO-government engagement in the Department of Education (DepEd).
This conference-workshop is meant to start putting the citizens and civil society at the center, not mere expectators and recipients of policies and services - but as active actors pivotal in direction-/ agenda-setting and in leading this country to a better future.
Accountability is achieved and sustained by creating and strengthening institutions. Institutions are strengthened through accountability efforts and practices.
'If the mechanism of our government is working towards ensuring transparency and accountability, we might not even have to do what we have been doing as a civil society organization'
There is still much room for improvement in citizen participation in local education governance
This paper presents the result of the exploratory research conducted by a research team of Ateneo School of Government that studied the impact of civil society participation on the responsiveness of local spending for education.
One of the reasons the Pork exists is because it filled-in the gap of our maldeveloped/ underdeveloped party system, which is supposed to be the mechanism that facilitates the relationship between the executive and the legislature. And party system, in simplest term, refers to how you organize political partisan affiliations.
There is a fundamental problem if we are organizing a rally against a system that is perpetuated because of the underdevelopment or maldevelopment of the system for partisan politics if we are organizing it in a way that discredits or neutralizes the latter. We are contributing to a mindset in our political culture that is keeping us from developing our party system, key in making pork irrelevant or at least not the sole determing factor in the relationship between the executive and the legislature.