Mutual Collective Accountability
Mutual accountability to ensure the collective progress towards common goals
WHAT IS IT?
Mutual Collective Accountability (MCA) is a mechanism for voluntary cooperation that is in everyone’s best interest and relies on an ongoing process of collaborative accountability towards common goals. Instead of having one authority checking the accountability of various actors, the actors agree to hold themselves and be held accountable for the commitments they voluntarily make. Actors realize that it is in everyone’s best interest to collaborate towards common goals that create the conditions for all to be healthy and flourish. It is also collective, meaning that all the actors engage in the collaborative relationship. The scope of MCA includes both democratically or legally accountable actors (e.g., countries) and other actors that are not democratically or legally accountable (e.g., World Bank).
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
Mutual Collective Accountability clarifies all actor’s roles and responsibilities, providing big-picture context of how they line up with overarching objectives. MCA also provides a strong foundation for achieving health goals, because it forms a basis for effective duty allocation. In the absence of global government, actors need the mechanism of MCA to ensure commitments to shared goals and public moral norms are sustained and enacted.
WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE?
Mutual Collective Accountability measures accountability according to key indicators. These key indicators vary for each group of actors; they are based on the group’s shared goals and objectives, as well as each actor's position and capabilities. Recognizing and continuously assessing actors' accountability occurs both within and across institutions. For example, a World Bank health economist is accountable to the World Bank for fulfilling her duties; the health economist and the World Bank are accountable to the Global Fund for accomplishing goals via agreed-upon standards and procedures. MCA also ties the ex-ante standard-setting before action with the ex-post assessment of the action more closely.
HOW DO WE DO IT?
To initiate this principle, we need to elaborate on what it means to hold domestic and global health actors accountable. It compels us to specify the key indicators to assess accountability. For example, in a previous project, we used MCA indicators to evaluate Malawi’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) (See more details for the paper below ). The indicators included: (1) goal alignment; (2) adequacy of human and financial resources; (3) mutual understanding of key outcomes and the pertinent data and indicators measuring those outcomes; (4) constructive engagement of relevant global, national, and subnational groups and institutions; (5) genuine efforts to involve groups that policy decisions affect (for example, the poor, women, youth, persons with disabilities, and the elderly); and (6) effectiveness and efficiency. Our assessment findings provided an opportunity to discuss how different actors could work to improve key indicators. This accountability assessment is an example of MCA that can be readily applied to other countries.