There are potentially two approaches through which social accountability mechanisms can contribute to improving
systemic monitoring and sanctioning of public officials: either by substituting horizontal agencies and holding
power holders directly accountable by exposing their misuses of office as suggested by Jenkins and Goetz
(1999) and Reinikka and Svensson (2003) or by activating horizontal agencies and thus indirectly increasing
horizontal accountability (Grimes, 2008; Malena et al., 2004; Peruzzotti and Smulovitz, 2002). In the first option,
the social accountability mechanism generates public pressure and mobilizes citizens to monitor individual public
officials to reduce corruption. This leads to the following hypothesis: