A Research Project Report by Edwin Odhiambo Siala, Submitted to the School of Business in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Executive Masters of Science in Organizational Development (EMOD).

The Local Authority Service Delivery Action Plan (LASDAP) and Constituencies Development Fund (CDF) have been the main vehicles of community participation at the local level. A major weakness in the CDF Act has been the lack of clear mechanisms for the community to participate in decision making. Whereas these mechanisms exist under the very elaborate LASDAP framework revised in 2009, empirical studies have established that there exists a gap between policy and practice. With the adoption of Kenya Constitution (2010) local authorities have been replaced by Counties and the Constitution further establishes concept of public participation in the County budget process. This requirement is further reinforced by the Public Financial management Act, 2012. Together, the two documents provide for civic participation in public financial affairs, however both documents are rather vague on the process of public participation thus entrusting counties to institutionalize process of public partic...

The study aimed at examining citizens’ participation in the government budget process. Specifically, the study intended to find out the local government officials’ perception on involvement of citizens in the budget process and establish the challenges hindering citizens’ participation in the budget process. This was an exploratory research which used qualitative research methods to explore respondents’ opinions and perception towards citizen participation in the budget process. Focus group discussions (6) were employed using small groups of 10 participants; whereby a total of 60 respondents were involved. Besides, the study employed Key Informants Interviews (27), Observation and Desk Reviews to further triangulate the findings from the Focus Group Discussions. The respondents were purposively selected based on their experience and knowledge on government budgeting process and citizens above the age of 18. The findings revealed that, local government officials believed in the impor...

Transparency and accountability of a government that is always using public resources in its affairs is paramount for its people's satisfaction, equitable development and growth, and tranquility in any society, but even more important is involving the people in development projects and economic planning that will ensure and enhance acceptability of policies and smooth implementation of government programmes. The sensitivity of public funds and resource, the impact of government's financial sources e.g, taxation, on the people and redistribution within an economic system in an equitable sense to the satisfaction of the people becomes a concern especially when funds are used in unbudgetted or unplanned projects. To deracimate profound corruption, misallocation and misuse of resources and heighten intimacy and cooperation between the citizens and the governors, public participation becomes a necessity as a tool of enlightement, information, and driving economic and social transformation by holding the trustees in public offices accountable and responsible. In Kenya budget is read every year; the national budget and the 47 county budgets at the assemblies. Our concern in this paper is the budget at the county government but the legal requirements for both national and county government may be a little different if not the same. It intends to cover in simply language budgeting process and public participaation with the following inclusions; the introduction comprising of definitions, the importance and brief history which defined our route, the various steps in budget making including the dates when we should have the documents presented, the right to participate and most importantly the importance of public participation. It also entails challenges and recommendations.

Participatory Budgeting (PB) experiments in municipalities across the world have yielded varied results as there are municipalities. The Kenyan experience of participatory experiments has not fared any better. Following the 2013 elections, which initiated county governments in line with the 2010 constitution, Makueni County emerged as a unique case for study having experimented with its very own participatory budgeting mechanism. The qualitative study reported in this article examined how Makueni’sPB framework is designed and implemented. The emerging outcomes of institutional design and implementation are then contextualised to Makueni’s socio-political and cultural setting. The study discusses two sets of PB outcomes: outcomes on public participation (questions of inclusion, exclusion and quality of participation in PB) and outcomes of PB (concerned with the end- line developmental products of the PB process). The purpose of this article is to recentre the often-ignored considerations on the socio-political and cultural in PB experiments in Kenya’s devolved governance structures and beyond.

The study established the contribution of participatory budgeting in Kabale district local government. Using a cross-sectional research design, in which both quantitative and qualitative approaches were adopted, the study investigated 117 units; which were randomly and purposively selected from 174 subjects. The study adopted self-administered questionnaires and interview guides to collect data. Frequencies and percentages were used to analyze quantitative data while direct quotes from interviews supported qualitative analysis. Quantitative analysis was supported by software for document analysis (SPSS V 20.0). The study investigated the contribution of participatory budgeting from the viewpoints of information sharing, codes of conduct, facility for citizen complaints, and stakeholders' consultation. The study found stakeholders' consultation as the most important contribution of participatory budgeting. However, it was undermined by the absence of clear rules and procedures that govern budget consultative meetings. Since all the constructs used in measuring the contribution of participatory budgeting in Kabale were above average, it was concluded that participatory budgeting is practiced in Kabale district local government and is generally important. In recommendation, Kabale district local government should spell out the rules and procedures governing participatory budgeting in a statute or guideline. Secondly, the local government should consider holding several consultative meetings with various stakeholders to ensure the priorities of the common person are catered for in the budget estimates for any financial year. Lastly, the local government should consider allocating some funds to facilitate the operations of the office in charge of citizens' complaints.

This study aimed to examine effects of three intervening variable directly and indirectly, that are job relevant information, budget goal commitment, and job satisfaction on relationship between budgetary participation and apparatus performance. The inconsistencies of the previous research of the effect of the budgetary participation on the performance become the motivation of the present research. The present research is a survey in which data were collected using a questionnaire distributed to the SKPD Structural Officials of consisting of Echelon II, Echelon III and Echelon IV at the Regional Government of West Lombok Regency. The populations are 673 persons structural officials of Echelon II, Echelon III and Echelon IV. Respondents was selected by purposive sampling method in which officers involved in the budgeting process, of the 122 distributed questionnaires, all questionnaires were returned. The analysis method was variant-based SEM using SmartPLS Version 2.0 M3. The instru...

The paper examines effectiveness of government support, citizen and civil society organizations involvement on budgetary participation at Local Government in Tanzania: A Case Study of Mtwara Mikindani Municipal. The study adopted a descriptive case study design, with a sample of 113 citizens including local 100 citizens randomly chose. The findings established that government support is ineffective, citizens are not participating due to unfulfilled promises and civil society involvement is lacking behind not fulfilling their role in participatory budgeting process. The study recommends to the government to deliberately adhere to stipulated laws governing participatory budgeting, LGAs financial collections should remain in their regions to be used for development funding, priority should be set for provision of civic education for citizens for productive involvement. Citizens should be empowered through information on budgeting issues to help them understand the process and they shou...