Political accountability in East African countries

Who should make MPs and councillors do their jobs?

One of the critical challenges facing African countries today is how to make governments work for the people – using resources at their disposal efficiently, delivering public goods and services, and guaranteeing an equitable distribution of opportunities and national income among citizens. In many places, systems of checks and balances have not lived up to expectations in making state institutions deliver such public goods. As a result, citizen participation in government oversight is now recognized as almost indispensable. In representative democracies, citizens elect politicians at predefined intervals, who then take on the role of overseeing the executive. Members of Parliament (MPs) are one such group, along with local government councilors and, as chief of the executive, the president. Since these politicians obtain their mandate from voters through elections, they should be answerable primarily to the voters. In fact, with weaknesses in the functioning of horizontal checks and balances, the primacy of voters in holding their elected leaders to account cannot be overstated.