Institutional factors, political environment and public participation in monitoring and evaluation: a case of pre-primary school projects in Migori county, Kenya

Abstract

Public participation in monitoring and evaluation of county government projects is aimed at ensuring that the government is accountable in spending public finance, diverse public inputs and public project ownership by a widespread cross-section of prospective beneficiaries. Public participation in monitoring and evaluation of county government projects during the transition period in Kenya is recent and therefore creates a research gap. Seven objectives guided this study: To establish the extent to which organizational structure influences public participation, to examine the extent to which organizational leadership influences public participation in monitoring and evaluation, to assess the extent to which capacity in monitoring and evaluation influences public participation in monitoring and evaluation and to establish the extent to which political environment influences public participation in monitoring and evaluation of county government projects and how it moderates the relationship between institutional factors namely; organizational structure and leadership capacity and public participation in monitoring and evaluation of county government funded preschool projects in Migori County. This study was based on pragmatic/realist paradigm, and adopted the mixed-methods research approach utilizing both descriptive survey and correlation research designs. The study targeted a population of 884 active county government project committee members in all the 68 preschools. Purposive sampling method was used to select a sample size of 272. A questionnaire, interview and document analysis guides were used to collect data. Qualitative data was analysed through thematic analysis while descriptive and regressions analyses were used to analyse quantitative data. It was found that the organizational structure of Migori County negatively influences (is not supportive of) public participation in M&E of preschool projects. This is irrespective of the fact that it (organizational structure) has the potential of positive influence on public participation in M&E of projects in general. The study also concludes the leadership style of Migori County Government does not support public participation in M&E of preschool projects, although the same (leadership style) has high correlations with public participation in M&E of projects. This is because improvement in leadership style is expected to positively increase public participation in M&E of projects. Equally, it is concluded that the capacity of the human resource in the County Government of Migori does not influence public participation in M & E of preschool projects despite the same having high and positive correlations with public participation of projects. This is because a unit improvement in HR capacity is expected to increase public participation in M&E of preschool projects in the County Government. In addition, the study also found that the political environment of Migori County Government does not support public participation in M&E of preschool projects. Moreover, political environment highly correlates with public participation in M&E of projects, and any improvement in political environment is expected to result into very high increase in public participation of M&E of preschool projects in the area. Political environment was also found to have significant moderating effect on the relationship between organizational structure and public participation in M&E as well as organizational leadership and public participation in M&E of preschool projects. In order to improve public participation in M&E of preschool projects, the study recommends that the organization structure should adopt policies that support participation of all stakeholders in M&E of projects; styles like democratic or leizes fair leadership style which allows local managers of individual projects to make individual decisions based on the unique needs of each project should be adopted; training as well as retraining of personnel (particularly M&E officers) be done continuously; and political environment need to be improved so that public participation, particularly in M&E of preschool projects, is improved. For further research, it is recommended that a study be done on the effect of horizontal communication strategy on public participation in M&E of preschool projects.