The Impact and Effectiveness of Accountability and Transparency Initiatives: The Governance of Natural Resources

The rapid growth in the past decade in transparency and accountability initiatives (TAIs) in the extractive industries sector reflects attempts to devise institutional mechanisms to make governments accountable for the extraction, allocation and use of revenues that, if well invested, could alleviate socioeconomic inequalities among citizens. Understanding and measuring the impact and effectiveness of these initiatives is a matter of proposing and empirically validating a causal link between interventions and governance improvements. To do this requires improved data collection, reporting and analysis; a stronger focus on the allocation and use of government expenditures that come from natural-resource wealth; and a better understanding of importance of incentives and sanctions for ensuring effective impact.