The main interest of this chapter is in how urban residents and the organizations they form or in which they engage can hold government organizations to account for their policies, investment priorities and expenditures. Also how they can influence what infrastructure and services they get, especially those related to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. This includes their influence on the quality and extent of provision and on prices charged. It includes their influence on how government decisions are made and implemented, how government funding is allocated and how diverging (and often conflicting) interests are reconciled in accordance with the rule of law.2 It also includes the modalities that governments choose to use to deliver basic services to their citizens. So at its core is an interest in social accountability in the relationships between urban governments and the citizens within their boundaries. It is also interested in when and how such social accountability actually brings change on a scale that reduces the often very large deficits in infrastructure and service provision in urban areas.
