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What are state capability and responsiveness?

State capability: Public authorities are responsible for ensuring citizens' political, social and economic rights, and in order to achieve outcomes that ensure social justice it is imperative that public authorities and other power-holders have the capacity to uphold these rights and deliver public goods. State capability means that state agencies and public authorities have both the capacity (technical and administrative) and ability (political and institutional) to deliver public goods. In general, capable states are able to formulate policies effectively (reconciling political and technical trade-offs between polities and technocrats) and to implement policies effectively (in terms of coordination, organisation, administration and accountability). To strengthen state capability means to respond to address these issues throughout the policy cycle, from design to delivery.

Responsiveness: Responsiveness is a kind of behaviour. According to Moore and Teskey (2006:3), 'a government/public authority is responsive if it makes some effort to identify and then meet the needs or wants of the people who will benefit from pro-poor growth.' So, state agencies and public authorities must establish means to identify the needs and/or wants of impact groups and mechanisms to deliver public goods that are able to meet these needs and/or wants.

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What do they mean in practice?

Building state capability means improving the technical (often, sector-specific) capacities of state personnel, strengthening administrative and organisational systems (e.g. M&E), facilitating coordination between ministries and non-governmental agencies (e.g. resourcing and programmatic complementarity) and instituting mechanisms to ensure citizen-state accountability (e.g. feedback mechanisms) in the design and provision of public goods.

State responsiveness means that public agencies and authorities respond to the needs and wants of these impact groups in a transparent and inclusive manner. Promoting greater responsiveness incurs actions to generate political will and incentives within line ministries and decentralised units to identify the needs and interests of impact groups, strengthening capacities for participatory design of public policies and programmes. This may take place by ensuring effective participatory budgeting at local level, promoting more inclusive consultation in local and national policy formulation and instituting social accountability mechanisms such as community score cards and budget tracking.

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Programming Examples

Latin America and the Caribbean

Peru, Participatory Voices: The project seeks to strengthen the capabilities of the Peruvian Ministry of Health to improve the care of pregnant mothers and infants. CARE has worked with the Neo-natal Health Collective to formulate strategic plans to reduce neo-natal and maternal mortality and also designed publications with the Ministry such as guides for community health agents and other health personnel on the integral care and nutrition for pregnant women and new born children, and these have been adapted to different regional contexts.

To learn more about the project, please see the below fact sheet:

participatory_voices_factsheet.docx

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Key Tools & Resources

Moore, M. and Tetskey, G. (2006) The CAR Framework: Capability, Accountability, Responsiveness. What Do These Terms Mean, Individually and Collectively? A Discussion Note for DFID Governance and Conflict Advisers.

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Contact

For more information, please contact the Governance Team Leader, Gaia Gozzo at: gozzo@careinternational.org