Former Members of the International Experts Panel

The following individuals served as IEP members from 2013-2016.  Please note that this page is no longer updated.

Yamini Aiyar, Accountability Initiative, India 
Yamini Aiyar is currently a senior research fellow and director of the accountability initiative being set up at the Centre for Policy Research. The Accountability initiative aims to promote research, innovations and tools to strengthen accountability and citizen’s engagement in India’s governance processes. Prior to joining CPR Yamini was working as an independent consultant providing research and policy support to government, international donors and civil society organizations on governance reform with a focus on issues related to strengthening accountability in basic service delivery. Yamini has also worked with the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program and Rural Development Unit in New Delhi. The focus of her work was on action research aimed at strengthening mechanisms for citizen’s engagement in local government. She was a member of the decentralization team at the World Bank that provided policy support to strengthen Panchayati Raj (local governance) in India. Yamini has also worked on issues related to decentralization and service delivery at the Ford Foundation with the Foundation’s Governance and Civil Society program. Yamini has an Msc in Development Studies from the London School of Economics, an MA in Social and Political Sciences from St. Edmunds College Cambridge University, UK and a BA in Philosophy from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University.

Debbie Budlender, Independent Researcher, South Africa
Debbie Budlender is an independent research consultant. She was employed as a specialist researcher with the Community Agency for Social Enquiry (C A S E), a South African non-governmental organisation working in the area of social policy research, from 1998 to June 2012. Previous employment includes administrative and research work for trade unions, and research for the Cape Town University-based Southern African Labour and Development Research Unit at the time of the Second Carnegie Enquiry into Poverty.  Between April 1997 and March 2002 Debbie was on a long-term part-time secondment to Statistics South Africa, the country’s national statistical bureau. At Stats SA, Debbie worked primarily on gender, employment, poverty and children’s issues. She was also in charge of planning and running the country’s first national time use study. Between April 2002 and June 2012 she was on a long-term part-time secondment to the Centre for Actuarial Research at the University of Cape Town.  In addition to development- and policy-related work done in South Africa for government, civil society organisations and donors, Debbie has served as consultant – primarily on budgets, statistics and gender issues – to non-governmental organisations, governments, parliamentarians, multilateral institutions and donors in countries which include Albania, Bangladesh, Barbados, Botswana, China, Croatia, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Lesotho, Macedonia, Malawi, Malaysia, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Nepal, Pakistan, Palestine, Philippines, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Senegal, Serbia, Slovenia, Sri Lanka, Swaziland, Tanzania, Turkey, Uganda, United Kingdom, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Jonathan Fox, American University, United States 
Jonathan Fox is a professor at the School of International Service at American University. He received his PhD in political science from MIT in 1986. His research addresses the relationships between transparency, accountability and civil society participation. His books include: Subsidizing Inequality: Mexican Corn Policy Since NAFTA (co-editor, 2010), Accountability Politics: Power and Voice in Rural Mexico (2007), Mexico’s Right-to-Know Reforms: Civil Society Perspectives (co-editor, 2007), Indigenous Mexican Migrants in the United States (co-editor, 2004), Demanding Accountability: Civil Society Claims and the World Bank Inspection Panel (co-editor, 2003) The Struggle for Accountability: The World Bank, NGOs and Grassroots Movements (co-editor, 1998), Decentralization and Rural Development in Mexico: Community Participation in Oaxaca’s Municipal Funds Program (co-author, 1996) and The Politics of Food in Mexico: State Power and Social Mobilization (1992). He has held fellowships from the Council on Foreign Relations and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and currently serves on the editorial committee of http://www.subsidiosalcampo.org.mx(link is external), a Mexican right-to-know resource on agricultural policy. He partners with a wide range of public interest groups, advises private foundations and currently serves on the boards of Oxfam-America and Fundar, a Mexican public interest group.

Rosemary McGee, Institute of Development Studies, United Kingdom
Rosemary McGee is a Fellow in the Participation, Power and Social Change team at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex.  Trained in interdisciplinary Development Studies, she has alternated between her academic role at IDS and various development practitioner roles in the international NGO sector.  She joined IDS’s Participation, Power and Social Change team in 1999, and her initial work there was on participatory poverty assessment methodologies. From 2000-2003 her focus was on promoting and supporting the participation of civil society organisations in policy processes.  Research and advisory work with donor agencies and NGOs on participation in Poverty Reduction Strategy formulation and monitoring led her onto more critical conceptual and empirical work on the spaces available for CSO and citizen participation in policy processes(link is external).  Since 1997 she held several posts in the international NGO Christian Aid, as a policy researcher on gender and on participation, an advocacy officer and a programme manager.  In her current IDS role she continues to work for Christian Aid as well as other international development NGOs including Trócaire, Plan International, Plan UK, CARE, World Vision, ActionAid and Amnesty International.  From seeking ways to enable CSOs and citizens to participate in policy processes, she joined the movement of southern community and youth groups, NGOs, users’ associations and social activists seeking to hold to account states and aid agencies to account.  Looking into these citizen-led and social forms of accountability brought her up against the tension often encountered between accountability as commonly understood – usually to donors – and learning, for improved performance and more equitable, accountable development outcomes.  A Review of the Impact and Effectiveness of Transparency and Accountability Initiatives that she and John Gaventa led for DFID in 2010-11 highlighted the challenges of demonstrating this sort of impact, as well as the need for more learning-focused approaches to design and implementation.  In several projects with the International Budget Partnership she has explored and supported civil society advocacy on budget policy and practice.  From 2012 she also convenes the MA Participation, Power and Social Change program at University of Sussex.

Gerardo Munck, University of Southern California, United States and Argentina
Gerardo Munck, Argentinian by birth, is professor in the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California (USC). He received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) in 1990. His research focuses on democracy and governance, Latin America and methodology. His books include Measuring Democracy: A Bridge Between Scholarship and Politics (Johns Hopkins University, 2009); Regimes and Democracy in Latin America (Oxford, 2007); Passion, Craft, and Method in Comparative Politics (with Richard Snyder; Johns Hopkins, 2007); and Authoritarianism and Democratization: Soldiers and Workers in Argentina, 1976-83 (Penn State, 1998). He has published dozens of journal articles in the United States, Canada, England, Spain, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador and Mexico.

Professor Munck collaborated in the preparation of the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) report Democracy in Latin America (2004) and a second regional report prepared by the UNDP and the Organization of American States (OAS), Nuestra democracia (2010). He developed a methodology to monitor elections for the OAS.  He worked with the UNDP on a system to monitor corruption in Afghanistan and on the measures of corruption and gender equality used in UNDP regional reports on Asia and the Pacific. He has also worked as a consultant for the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the Carter Center. 

The following individual served as an IEP member from 2015 to 2016.

Liliane Corrêa de Oliveira Klaus, University of São Paulo, Brazil

Liliane Klaus is a postdoctoral scholar from University of São Paulo, Brazil and a collaborating researcher for the Sorbonne University in France. She is both an accountant and a business administrator, and has developed her PhD on informational reception in Germany. Her research has been focused in tracking progress of governmental transparency and anti-corruption measures and in developing tools for citizens and media to assess them.  The developed methods try to set higher standards to public institutions and their open government strategies, specially the military, whose budget quality and access to information measures she has been deeply analyzing. She is also responsible for the first scientific publications defining public military transparency, assessing military procurement fraud and proposing assessment tools to public military integrity. Her works were accepted by renowned scientific journals such as Electronic Government (UK), Gouvernances Publiques (France) and Journal of Military Ethics (Norway), and have been presented around the world. Since 2014, she has been working with Transparency International as country assessor evaluating corruption risks for the public defense sector. Other professional experiences were gathered not only in transnational companies (KPMG and Siemens) but also in the military public environment (Brazilian Army).