Pathways to Citizen Accountability: Brazil’s Bolsa Família
通过访谈官员和受益者，分析巴西家庭补助金计划中公民自下而上的监督与国家行政控制哪种路径更有效地促进了问责，发现自上而下的行政监管（如透明度和随机审计）在保护项目完整性方面作用更大。
This article examines the pathways – citizen-driven, bottom-up oversight or state-centred administrative controls – that have played the largest role in promoting the accountability of the Bolsa Família programme. The exploratory analysis draws on interviews with local and federal officials as well as beneficiaries of the Bolsa Família in order to identify the ways monitoring and accountability have evolved in practise and on the ground. Field research highlights that citizen- and community-driven participatory mechanisms for ongoing monitoring and accountability are relatively weak. Top-down administrative regulations, such as programmatic transparency and random audits, have largely worked to protect the integrity of the programme. The article concludes by discussing the opportunities for greater community-driven participatory oversight in the future.