How Do Legal Strategies Advance Social Accountability? Evaluating Mechanisms in Colombia

While prior studies have suggested that legal strategies offer promising tools for social accountability, the existing literature has not yet identified the underlying mechanisms that link legal strategies to accountability improvements. In this theory-building paper, we argue that there are four mechanisms by which legal strategies can enhance accountability. First, the courts can help those affected by policy failures to overcome the collective action problem. Second, courts can provide civil society with access to information about rights violations, malfeasance, and poor policy performance. Third, legal strategies can set in motion court-backed reforms that redress immediate rights violations and strengthen state capacity for more accountable governance. Fourth, court recognition can increase the symbolic and discursive resources of claimants, making their demands for accountability more effective. We illustrate these mechanisms through a comparative analysis of two policy arenas in Colombia, environment and healthcare – two areas in which civil society engagement with the judiciary opened up new routes for social accountability. By bridging the previously disconnected literatures on legal mobilisation and social accountability, this paper creates an analytical framework to understand the menu of options that citizens face about where and how to seek accountability from the state.

尽管既往研究表明，法律策略为社会问责提供了颇具潜力的工具，但现有文献尚未厘清将法律策略与问责效能提升相联系的内在作用机制。在这篇理论构建类论文中，我们提出法律策略可通过四种机制强化问责效能：其一，法院可帮助受政策失灵影响的群体克服集体行动困境；其二，法院能够为公民社会提供有关侵权行为、渎职行为及政策执行不力的信息获取渠道；其三，法律策略可推动由法院背书的改革进程，以纠正当下的侵权行为，并提升国家治理的问责能力；其四，法院的司法认定可提升诉求方的符号性与话语资源，使其问责诉求更具实效。我们通过对哥伦比亚环境与医疗两大政策领域的比较分析阐释上述机制——在这两个领域中，公民社会与司法体系的互动为社会问责开辟了全新路径。本文衔接了此前相互割裂的法律动员（legal mobilisation）与社会问责相关研究，构建了一套分析框架，用以理解公民在寻求国家问责时可选择的路径与方式。