Assessing the Evidence: The Effectiveness and Impact of Public Governance-Oriented Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives

Transnational multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) – voluntary partnerships between governments, civil society, and the private sector – are an increasingly prevalent strategy for promoting government responsiveness and accountability to citizens. While most transnational MSIs involve using voluntary standards to encourage socially and environmentally responsible private sector behavior, a handful of these initiatives – the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), the Construction Sector Transparency Initiative (CoST), the Open Government Partnership (OGP), the Global Initiative on Fiscal Transparency (GIFT) and the Open Contracting Partnership (OCP) – focus on information disclosure and participation in the public sector. Unlike private sector MSIs, which attempt to supplement weak government capacity to enforce basic social and environmental standards through partnerships between businesses and civil society, public sector MSIs ultimately seek to bolster public governance. But how exactly are these MSIs supposed to work? And how much has actually been achieved? The purpose of this study is to identify and consolidate the current state of the evidence for public governance-oriented MSI effectiveness and impact. Researchers collected over 300 documents and interviewed more than two-dozen MSI stakeholders about their experiences with five public governance oriented multi-stakeholder initiatives. This report provides a ‘snapshot’ of the evidence related to these five MSIs, and suggests that the process of leveraging transparency and participation through these initiatives for broader accountability gains remains uncertain. The report highlights the ongoing process of defining MSI success and impact, and how these initiatives intersect with other accountability actors and processes in complex ways. The study closes with key recommendations for MSI stakeholders.