Pathways to Citizen Accountability: Brazil’s Bolsa Família

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.