Person:
Grandvoinnet, Helene
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Governance
Degrees
Departments
Global Practice on Governance, The World Bank
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
January 31, 2023
Biography
Helene Grandvoinnet is Lead Governance Specialist in the Governance Global Practice and is currently working with the Africa team. She joined the Bank in 1999 as a junior consultant on the chapters on empowerment for the World Development Report 2000 on Poverty. From 2000 to 2010, she worked as a Public then Senior Public Sector Specialist in the Africa region where she tasked managed investment projects, Develpoment policy lending and authored various analytical reports supporting a broad array of governance issues. From 2008 to 2010 she was the Governance & Anticorruption (GAC) Coordinator for the Africa Region and contributed to raise awareness and mainstream the GAC agenda. From 2010-2014, she was the Cluster Leader for the Social Accountability and Demand for Good Governance team in the Social Development Department, where she headed a very active Community of Practices on Social Accountability..
Prior to joining the Bank, Helene worked for the OECD development center focusing on research programs on governance and poverty reduction, conflict management in Africa and anti-corruption initiatives. Prior to that, she worked for the Legal and Financial division of the Ministry of Culture in France.
Ms. Grandvoinnet, an American and French national, holds a degree in public administration from the Paris Institute of Political Science and a post-graduate in international administration from the University of Paris II- Pantheon-Assas.
Publication Search Results
1 - 8 of 8
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Publication
Mainstreaming Citizen Engagement in Public Financial Management for Better Results
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-12-01)Public financial management (PFM) is fundamental for effective resource management and the backbone for effective and efficient public service delivery. Citizen engagement (CE) in the PFM cycle contributes to achieving better development outcomes by mobilizing citizens in the PFM process, supporting more inclusive budget processes, and establishing pro-poor fiscal policies. Based on a desk review, this note is intended to provide a menu of CE entry points in the PFM cycle and serve as a reference guide to support World Bank task teams. It indicates that CE in PFM needs to move beyond transparency to achieve development objectives; budget literacy for inclusive CE is critical for both government and citizens; and two polarized types of engagement in PFM — engagement with the general public and engagement with small, selected, and specialized groups for in-depth feedback — are complementary to each other in achieving effective budget outcomes. -
Publication
Fostering Community-Driven Development : What Role for the State?
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2003-01)States can do much to tap community-level energies, and resources for development, if they seek to interact more synergistically with local communities. The broader spin-off is creating a developmental society, and polity. Using case studies from Asia and Latin America, the authors show how: 1) State efforts to bring about land reform, tenancy reform, and expanding non-crop sources of income, can broaden the distribution of power in rural communities, laying the basis for more effective community-driven collective action; and 2) Higher levels of government can form alliances with communities, putting pressure on local authorities from above, and below to improve development outcomes at the local level. These alliances can also be very effective in catalyzing collective action at community level, and reducing :local capture" by vested interests. There are several encouraging points that emerge from these case studies. First, these powerful institutional changes do not necessarily take long to generate. Second, they can be achieved in a diversity of settings: tightly knit or loose-knit communities; war-ravaged, or relatively stable; democratic, or authoritarian; with land reform, or (if carefully managed) even without. Third, there are strong political payoffs in terms of legitimacy, and popular support for those who support such developmental action. -
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Mainstreaming Citizen Engagement in the Middle East and North Africa Region: A Briefing Note
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-09)This brief provides an introduction to the issue of citizen engagement (CE) as well as the piloting of the agenda in the Banks Middle East and North Africa (MNA) region. The objective is to develop sustainable country systems for CE. It includes participation of citizens in all spheres of development, whether the making of policies and decisions that affect citizens, the formulation and execution of budgets, or delivery of public services. At the policy, program, and project level, CE work includes strengthening government-citizen interaction and results through citizen-beneficiary consultation, participation, and collaboration in all aspects of projects, programs, or policies. As part of its new strategy, the World Bank Group (WBG) has committed to mainstreaming CE in country engagements and operations to achieve improved development results through participatory planning, management and monitoring, participatory budgeting, and grievance mechanisms. Citizen movements globally and in MNA have mobilized to demand greater voice and participation in decisions affecting their lives in places where they are not heard or given opportunities to engage. CE brings dividends at the national and subnational, as well as project levels. The WBG is developing a strategy to scale up the use of CE principles, mechanisms, and processes in its engagement with non-state actors, as well as with government counterparts. -
Publication
Mainstreaming Citizen Engagement through the World Bank Group’s Country Engagement Model
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-12-01)Efforts to mainstream citizen engagement into the Country Partnership Framework (CPF) cycle have the potential to contribute toward achieving country development goals and the World Bank Group’s twin goals of ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity by maximizing the impact of citizen-centric initiatives. Informed by the findings of a desk review of the Systematic Country Diagnostic (SCD) and corresponding CPF from FY14 to FY19, this technical note is intended to serve as a resource for World Bank task teams to elaborate on options and entry points for systematic mainstreaming of citizen engagement in the CPF cycle, specifically in preparing the SCDs, CPFs, Performance and Learning Reviews, and Completion and Learning Reviews. -
Publication
Engaging Citizens in Countries Affected by Fragility, Conflict, and Violence
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-12-01)This paper provides insights for World Bank staff to support a stronger understanding of the challenges, opportunities, and entry points to mainstreaming citizen engagement in fragility,conflict, and violence (FCV) contexts. It does not promise comprehensive solutions, rather a more nuanced view of citizen engagement in FCVs, and it suggests operational response. First, it summarizes what makes citizen engagement a necessary but challenging agenda. Second, it summarizes operational implications and suggestions for supporting citizen engagement using various FCV archetypes and examples of approaches to citizen engagement as a primer for the future direction of this agenda within the Governance Global Practice (GGP). The paper builds on the analysis conducted for the World Bank’s flagship report Opening the Black Box: The Contextual Drivers of Social Accountability, incorporating additional insights from the past few years. It is one in aseries of four papers from the GGP on citizen engagement in the areas of FCV situations, opengovernment, trust, and emerging technology. -
Publication
Supporting Social Accountability in the Middle East and North Africa : Lessons from Transitions
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-01)Social accountability is increasingly recognized as a way to make governance reforms and development efforts more effective in responding to the needs of citizens. Supporting initiatives that strengthen social accountability at the regional and national levels is consistent with the priority the Bank places on social and economic inclusion, citizen participation, and the quality of governance. The longer paper provides a brief overview of some experiences in the Middle East and North Africa (MNA) Region and international experiences from Indonesia, Turkey and the Philippines supporting social accountability during political and economic transitions. The full paper was prepared for a conference around the 2011 Annual Meetings in Washington, DC and included high-level policy makers from Egypt, Tunisia, Turkey, Indonesia and the Philippines. A panel of civil society organizations from the MNA Region exchanged perspectives about social accountability in the region, emerging opportunities and remaining challenges in making government more effective through an informed and engaged citizenry. -
Publication
State-Community Synergies in Development : Laying the Basis for Collective Action
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2000-09)If states would interact more synergistically with communities, they could tap local energies and resources for development-- and help create a development-oriented society and polity in the process. The authors analyze experience in several countries to identify the actions required for state-community synergies in development. Two actions that seem especially important: 1) Broadening the distribution of power within communities, to facilitate collective action and reduce the potential for local capture. In rural areas, much can be done by expanding access to credit, strengthening tenants' rights, and expanding non-crop sources of income. 2) Creating state-community alliances to improve the effectiveness of local public sector institutions and the delivery of services. Case studies from East Asia and Latin America show that such alliances can effect rapid improvements in local institutions, benefiting not only communities but also politicians seeking support and legitimacy. Local bureaucratic reform, combined with more egalitarian community social organizations, allows the creation of powerful coalitions and synergies for rapid, self-sustaining development. This model has been used to achieve outcomes ranging from better health care and drought relief to the generation of agrarian and industrial economic growth. In China and Taiwan, China, these state-community synergies helped produce not only for local consumption but for a rich export market. The cases show that with creative political thinking it is possible to effect rapid change even in poor institutional settings. The Brazilian experience shows how difficult institutional change is in highly inegalitarian settings, but also how such obstacles can be overcome by changes designed to bring grassroots electoral pressure to bear on local government. Experience elsewhere shows, however, how fragile such efforts can be if political support from above is prematurely withdrawn. -
Publication
Opening the Black Box: The Contextual Drivers of Social Accountability
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2015-04-14)This publication fills an important knowledge gap by providing guidance on how to assess contextual drivers of social accountability effectiveness. It aims to strategically support citizen engagement at the country level and for a specific issue or problem. The report proposes a novel framing of social accountability as the interplay of constitutive elements: citizen action and state action, supported by three enabling levers: civic mobilization, interface and information. For each of these constitutive elements, the report identifies 'drivers' of contextual effectiveness which take into account a broad range of contextual factors (e.g., social, political and intervention-based, including information and communication technologies). Opening the Black Box offers detailed guidance on how to assess each driver. It also applies the framework at two levels. At the country level, the report looks at 'archetypes' of challenging country contexts, such as regimes with no formal space or full support for citizen-state engagement and fragile and conflict-affected situations. The report also illustrates the use of the framework to analyze specific social accountability interventions through four case studies: Sierra Leone, Pakistan, Yemen, and the Kyrgyz Republic.