1. DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE FOR SOCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY THE NEW CHALLENGES FOR ASSESSING GOVERNANCE

2. HOW APPROACHING GOVERNANCE ASSESSMENT HAS CHANGED (1) from technical to political aspects, (2) from global to country level, (3) from numerical indicators to narrative trajectories, (4) from quantitative to qualitative methods, (5) from top-down to bottom-up approaches, (6) from supply to demand side response

3. THE NEW EMERGING PRINCIPLES National ownership Participation by citizen groups and civil society Multi-stakeholder involvement in design and initiation Strengthening accountability at all levels Building local capacity for country assessment Generating evidence and knowledge that is locally actionable

4. THE IDEA OF SOCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY SA = citizens acting together to hold the state accountable SA is more than governance assessments based on indicators and involves using data for advocacy and dialogue SA strengthens demand side through hearings and other measures involving citizens SA has implications for how to promote democratic governance and do assessments thereof

5. TOWARD A THIRD GENERATION OF GOVERNANCE ASSESSMENTS Multiple stakeholder ventures, sometimes initiated by responsive governments, other times by citizen groups; Exercises that aim at involving stakeholders in practical learning of how to govern better; Involvement with the objective of making the state more responsive to citizen demands; Focus on citizen monitoring to strengthen democratic governance; Linking knowledge generation to local civic action; Giving as much attention to the legitimacy of policy action as its effectiveness; Prioritizing a rights-based approach over one focused exclusively on results; Transcending a narrow institutional emphasis by including political economy analysis

6. WHAT CAN UNDP DO? Build genuine citizen demand for democratic governance; Learn from civil society actors and activists; Involve more practitioners from the South; Encourage exchanges of knowledge, methods, and tools; Improve its own political analysis of governance assessments; Create more “mediating spaces” between different stakeholders; Continue strengthening its virtual resource centre for governance assessments (GAP).