Strategies of Integrating Public Participation in Governance for Sustainable Development in Kenya

Abstract

Public participation is currently the famous tool of promoting transparency, accountability and effectiveness of any modern government. Kenya adopted this system of engaging citizens in governance when the new constitution was promulgated in 2010 that ushered in a decentralized system of government. This process has however been faced with challenges. Instead of reducing conflicts between government and the public, it has heightened witnessing so many petitions of government missing on priorities in terms of development and government policies. Using analytical survey approach, this study looks into what is happening in the day-to-day running of the devolved units of government and what can be done to avert the worsening ties between government and the public. Questionnaires were used to collect primary data which was subjected to descriptive statistics. On the findings, it emerged that the government is the main problem to promoting Public participation as regimes focus more on what they talked to people during campaigns and not what people need. There is great political interference ranging from ferrying a section of people, paying and coaching them to support unpopular government program. The findings also shows that the government tries to lock out citizens during participation process by giving a short notice and not designating venues for public participation events. The study concludes with strategies of enhancing public participation and reduce negative political influence by establishing an independent commission/institution or agency that will be incharge of public participation and coordination development programs.

Keywords: Public Participation, challenges of Public Participation, Strategies of enhancing public participation, sustainable Development

Compliance with Ethical standards: We complied with the ethical standards of the journal.

Conflict of Interest: The authors declare to have no conflict of interest.

Author’s consent: The aforementioned authors had a unanimous consensus to all processes undertaken towards the paper.

Research Funded by: Prof Chen Hao; School of Management, Jiangsu University; 212013

DOI: 10.7176/PPAR/9-7-06

Publication date:July 31^st 2019