Public Particaption in the Budget Making Process of County Governments; a Case Analysis of Select Counties.

Abstract

With the passing of the new constitution came in the concept of devolution and the sharing of power and resources between the national and county government, and among the constituencies within the county governments. The concept of devolution was meant to control imbalances in regional development and bring into existence citizen participation in the management of public resources by bringing decisionmaking closer to the people, hence promoting poverty alleviation and improving service delivery. Decentralization of resources including public funds aims at ensuring that development planning is done at the county level where the communities’ needs are best captured through public participation in the identification, analysis and prioritization of development projects through participatory planning and budgeting processes. Public participation is of fundamental importance as it provides an opportunity to the citizens to participate in management of public finances. The project will therefore seek to examine various aspects, first, the challenges affecting citizen participation in budget making process of county governments in Kenya. Secondly, to examine the history of public participation in Kenya before and after the passing of the new constitution (2010). Thirdly, the legal framework governing public participation in the budget making process at the county government level and fifthly, the extent to which county governments have implemented public participation in the budget making process. To demonstrate the extent which public participation has been implemented by county governments, a case analysis and review of various researches and surveys conducted on various county governments will be analyzed.

Although county governments have enacted various legislations for public participation nevertheless citizen participation in the budget making process of county governments remains elusive as it is not being conducted effectively and efficiently as anticipated by the Constitution. The legislations enacted have not provided clear structures on how public participation should be conducted. The study will seek to define various other numerous challenges that hinder effective public participation. These challenges include low literacy levels, lack of knowledge and poor understanding of laws in the budget making processes amongst others. County governments therefore need to come up with clear, defined structures and processes so as to overcome these challenges and ensure that effective and efficient public participation as a constitutional duty is being carried out as required under the law. The research project is adopting the doctrinal and case study methodology. It will seek to rely on primary and secondary sources of information. Some of the primary sources will include legislations, decided cases, media publications, newspapers, government policy documents, existing surveys and reports. Secondary sources of information and online materials will be used. The theoretical framework for the study will rely on the right based theory to give guidance on how county governments and citizens are to know what roles they are to play so as to ensure that public participation is effective and efficient and how best they can work together