The Effect of Civic Leadership Training on Citizen Engagement and Government Responsiveness: Experimental Evidence from the Philippines

"What are the effects of providing civic leadership training to community leaders from marginalised groups? Can it lead to increased participation by new leaders in local government processes, and increased government responsiveness to the needs of the poorest and most marginalised? Does it have the unintended consequence of these new leaders being co-opted by local politicians?"

To answer these questions on citizen engagement and government responsiveness, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Governance Lab (MIT GOV/LAB) joined a coalition of local civil society organisations (CSOs) led by Concerned Citizens of Abra for Good Government (CCAGG) to conduct a field experiment in the Northern Luzon region of the Philippines. Carried out as part of the Making All Voices Count research programme, the research studied the effect of providing civic leadership training to leaders from marginalised groups. It examined an experimental pilot intervention known as Project i-Pantawid that was designed to reach "parent leaders", individuals already identified as community leaders in a large-scale government conditional cash transfer (CCT) programme - the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) - that aims to benefit the "poorest of the poor".

The authors explain that there is a growing body of literature examining efforts to elevate the voices of the economically poor. Many governance interventions focus on providing citizens with information on government performance and how to participate in decision-making processes. However, there is a growing consensus that providing information alone rarely works. Even with information, citizens from marginalised groups lack the skills needed for participation and opportunities to put those skills into practice. In the intervention, described below, newly trained community leaders had the opportunity to apply the civic leadership skills they learned by disseminating information from their monthly training workshops to other beneficiaries in their barangay (village) and participating in meetings with local government officials.

However, they stress, empowering citizens may also create a more adversarial relationship between citizens and officials. In developing democracies, where the rule of law is weak and there are no guarantees that one will not be punished for challenging authorities, complaining about government performance - or even asking questions that seem critical - can be risky. Newly developed participation and leadership skills may very well go unused in these contexts. In addition, in a context where clientelistic exchanges and vote-buying are the norm during elections, there is also some risk that these skills will make leaders from economically poor communities attractive for politicians to co-opt as vote brokers. For these and other reasons, the Philippines provides a test for the theory that a civic skills training programme for community leaders can work.

The 4Ps programme provides families with cash grants on the condition that parents attend regular training sessions on responsible parenting, keep their children in school, and ensure that children and pregnant women in the household seek certain basic health services regularly. The Project i-Pantawid intervention builds on two programmatic innovations unique to the 4Ps, which are applied throughout the Philippines: family development sessions and parent leaders. The latter are selected by fellow beneficiaries to act as liaisons between beneficiaries and the CCT implementing agency in each community. Many parent leaders have previous leadership experience and higher levels of education relative to other beneficiaries; however, as beneficiaries themselves, they still have relatively low socio-economic status.

CCAGG and its partners designed a training intervention to build the capacity of parent leaders as "community facilitators for change" who can represent the interests of the economically poor - not just in the context of the CCT programme, but in local governance more broadly. Once a month, parent leaders gather for a training workshop focusing on the content for the family development session to be held later that month, so that they can lead this session themselves (usually, these are led by a government official, local non-governmental organisation (NGO) representative or church leader). The training workshop, run by a CSO facilitator and usually held at a municipal hall or other public space, focuses on parent leaders' civic skills and civic values, and teaches them how to teach the material to other CCT beneficiaries. Held for a period of over a year, the monthly trainings included 10-12 modules that focused on topics ranging from the duties of local officials and the rights and responsibilities of citizens, to local government budgeting and social accountability. Through this process, parent leaders learn and practise skills such as public speaking and how to mobilise CCT beneficiaries. In addition, Project i-Pantawid organises "interface" meetings between parent leaders, 4Ps beneficiaries, and health and education service providers. Parent leaders then mobilise and organise CCT beneficiaries to work with these service providers to evaluate the quality of service provision, discuss their respective scores, and develop joint action plans to address any shortfalls identified. Parent leaders also take a leadership role during meetings in which CCT beneficiaries form a social contract with the mayor of each municipality. Through this process, the partners sought to use the programme as a vehicle for political empowerment, as well as economic empowerment.

As explained in this report, the research collaboration evaluated the impact of this model on the political participation of parent leaders and the responsiveness of local government officials to the needs of marginalised groups. In addition, it assessed the potential for unintended political consequences of the leadership training in the Philippines, where strong clientelist networks can influence electoral mobilisation. In particular, it considered the possibility that leadership capacity-building might make parent leaders more attractive to politicians as "vote brokers" – individuals who can deliver the votes of their fellow beneficiaries in exchange for personal gain.

To measure the programme's effect, the researchers randomly selected 8 out of the 16 municipalities in the study to receive civic leadership training (as described above). The study population included 703 parent leaders, 361 of whom were the control group and the other half (342) of whom received the leadership training, and in turn led training sessions for fellow beneficiaries in their communities. In the study sample, the typical parent leader is female, aged between 40 and 49, and has completed high school. Most (88%) were chosen by fellow CCT beneficiaries.

The results show that the training mattered:

• Civic leadership training for parent leaders increased their political participation and engagement. The researchers tested the impact of the civic leadership training on 12 outcomes that measure political engagement. For 11 out of the 12 outcome measures, the treatment and control groups showed a difference in the expected direction. Newly trained parent leaders' greater engagement was evident in several ways - for example, higher attendance rates at local town hall meetings and participating more directly with local officials (e.g., asking questions and providing comments). Parent leaders who received training also demonstrated greater knowledge of government regulations and citizens' rights.
• There were changes in government responsiveness. While there was little difference in citizens' perceptions of government responsiveness to their complaints and concerns, local government officials in the communities where parent leaders were trained complied at higher rates with government transparency regulations (e.g., posting budgets in public places and reporting on budgetary revenues and expenditures during town hall meetings). These findings suggest that the impact of the intervention may have gone beyond the community leaders who participated directly in the training to affect the behaviour of local government officials. Trained parent leaders also reported interacting with local officials outside of town hall meetings more frequently than untrained parent leaders.
• There was no evidence of parent leaders being co-opted. In fact, reported rates of co-option, measured with a series of questions about election-related engagement and personal assistance received from officials, were lower on average in the municipalities where parent leaders had been trained.

Project i-Pantawid provided civic education to all CCT beneficiaries, both parent leaders (directly) and "ordinary" beneficiaries (via parent leaders cascading this education at family development sessions). However, although the project was intensive and sustained over a long period of time (relative to other civic education and empowerment interventions), the effects on knowledge, attitudes, and behaviour were, for the most part, limited to parent leaders.

In short, this research provides evidence that civic training for community leaders has the potential to empower the economically poor to raise their voice and actively engage in local governance. The researchers asked which characteristics of Project i-Pantawid and its implementers might have contributed to this effectiveness. They suggest that the following are critical aspects for other development initiatives aimed at empowering economically poor and marginalised groups:

• Local leadership. Project i-Pantawid is well run by a coalition of organisations that have worked together before. These organisations are embedded in an active and established civil society sector and have deep roots and long-standing relationships with local communities. They are also all local to Northern Luzon, not managed by a lead organisation in the capital.
• Sustained programming. Building on the findings of a thorough pilot initiative, Project i-Pantawid was designed to provide sustained, intensive training, occurring once a month for 11-14 months. In addition, the research reported here focused on the third iteration of the project. The first two iterations allowed for adjustments to the management and design of the programme, based on the experience of implementing organisations and feedback from beneficiaries. This meant that the training provided improved over time.
• Support within government. Project i-Pantawid was designed with active support from the national and local offices of the Department of Social Welfare and Development. This connection was made possible in part due to a constructive working relationship between the project's implementers and the Department's secretary at the time, who had come from a CSO background.

One launching point for future investigation involves the potential benefits of focusing explicitly on building leadership capacity within communities, in addition to providing information to individual citizens. In particular, prioritising individuals who have already been identified as potential leaders among marginalised groups may boost the impact of civic education interventions. Since only people with preexisting leadership roles were given opportunities to use their participation and leadership skills, it is not possible to disentangle these two mechanisms in the current study; looking separately at these mechanisms could be fruitful for future research.