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.
To get at this issue, the conveners’ agenda focused on different ways of connecting accountability initiatives so that the whole could be greater than the sum of the parts, which we called “integrated approaches to civil society monitoring and advocacy.” This umbrella concept tries to capture both public interest advocacy across different levels of governance, as well as citizen engagement with governmental checks and balances institutions.