INFLUENCE OF CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT IN BUDGET PLANNING ON DEVOLVED GOVERNANCE SYSTEMS IN MOMBASA COUNTY, KENYA
INFLUENCE OF CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT IN BUDGET PLANNING ON DEVOLVED GOVERNANCE SYSTEMS IN MOMBASA COUNTY, KENYA
Sila Boniventure Kioko - Student, Master of Public Policy and Administration, Kenyatta University, Kenya
Edna Moi - Lecturer, Department of Social Science, Murang’a University of Technology, Kenya
ABSTRACT
Public participation was at the heart of the Kenya constitution 2010, which demanded that public participation should be employed in all county governments that were established under the constitution. It was incumbent upon each devolved unit to develop a public participation policy to encourage and guide how the citizenry were involved in planning and implementation of public projects. In Kenya, the primary objectives of public participation in decentralized governance systems were to enlighten, involve, confer, cooperate, and enable the populace through various channels, such as elections or civil society initiatives that solicited public opinion throughout the policy-making process. Public bureaucracy, on the other hand, had a culture that discouraged public participation and instead favored traditional means of exchanging information, such as public hearings, which were frequently one-sided and unfocused on fixing problems. Therefore, through genuine public engagement, it was necessary to change that mentality and guarantee that citizens were partners in the governing process rather than only clients. This study aimed to ascertain how citizen involvement affected budget planning in devolved governance systems; second, to ascertain how citizen awareness affected budgeting and devolved governance and to explore the influence of monitoring and evaluation in budget planning on the performance of devolved governance systems in Mombasa county, Kenya. Stakeholder theory served as the study's foundation. The study used a descriptive research design. The aim of the study was the Mombasa County population of 378,422 households, and the Yamane method was used to choose 400 families as a sample. To improve the validity and reliability of research instruments, a pilot study was carried out. The primary research instrument for gathering both quantitative and qualitative data for the study was a self-administered questionnaire. SPSS version 26 was used to analyze the quantitative data both descriptively and inferentially. The results were shown as frequency tables, means, and standard deviations. Themes were used to analyze qualitative data, which were then presented narratively. To carry out the study, the investigator obtained a research authorization letter from Graduate School, Kenyatta University, as well as a research permit from the National Commission for Science, Technology, and Innovation (NACOSTI). The study concludes that citizen engagement positively affect the performance of devolved governance systems in Mombasa County, Kenya. The study recommended that policymakers and governance leaders in Mombasa County should prioritize the promotion of citizen engagement in the budgeting process. This can be achieved through the establishment of citizen engagement forums, public meetings, and town hall meetings where citizens can discuss and provide input on budget proposals.
