This study discusses social accountability in Timor-Leste by scrutinizing the patterns of state-society interactions and the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Analyzing five case studies in peacebuilding and development, it highlights NGOs’ multiple positions—from oversight and advocacy, to their role in facilitating statesociety relations in service delivery, suggesting alternative forms of public services, and conveying citizens’ views on government performance to the state. It elaborates how NGOs are closely associated with suco (village) and community authorities and bridge the gap between the state and society. In a fledging state, these dynamics emerge from the state’s attempts to formalize this relationship into law and society’s accommodation of its citizens within the local context. The study also addresses international actors who strive to support NGOs.

This article examines how truth commissions (TCs) contribute to promoting accountability, and argues TCs generate two horizontal accountability relationships. First, TCs hold state agencies accountable. Second, recommendations made by TCs can generate a relationship of horizontal accountability between the governing regime and the state agencies towards which the recommendations are directed. Next, I present the case of the 1994 Zonal Commissions in Sri Lanka, and to assess their contribution to accountability, I compare the evidence collected against evaluative criteria. The results show that while the commissions produced answerability, recommendations compiled in the final report were not implemented. The findings show long-term effectiveness of TCs may depend on senior officers within the state apparatus in addition to political leaders.

Truth commissions (TCs) have become a recurrent mechanism for states to deal with and address past human rights violations. This article argues that TCs generate accountability relationships at three different stages. Before their establishment, TCs generate vertical accountability relationships between civil society and the state. During the period between their establishment and the release of the final report, TCs hold state agencies horizontally accountable. In their final reports, TCs put forward recommendations capable of generating horizontal accountability between the governing regime and the state agencies towards which the recommendations are directed, and vertical accountability as civil society pushes the governing regime to implement these recommendations. This article suggests criteria for evaluating how truth commissions contribute to promoting accountability.