Accountability is often credited as playing a crucial role in establishing and maintaining legitimacy between citizens and states, contributing to more responsive allocation of public resources, reducing corruption, and improving the quality of public goods and services. Despite this potential, the evidence on how to effectively promote stronger accountability relationships and improved governance and development outcomes is limited. Moreover, accountability challenges can be particularly acute in fragile and conflict-affected states.

This report provides a problem-focused synthesis of evidence for the DFID-funded Implementation and Analysis in Action of Accountability Programme (IAAAP). It also offers a review of factors that influence the use of evidence to inform development policy and practice, and on flexible and adaptive programming. Assembling evidence and using adaptation to respond to it are two pathways through which IAAAP aims to enhance the ability of citizens in Somalia, Somaliland and Puntland to hold governance institutions to account.