Bureaucratic Readiness in Managing Local Level Participatory Governance: A Developing Country Context

Abstract

Participatory governance in developing countries is broadly viewed as an essential prerequisite for successful implementation of public projects. However, it poses many challenges for public bureaucrats in terms of their skills and willingness to engage citizens. Despite the growing evidence of the pervasiveness of participatory governance, research to date has not explored bureaucratic readiness to adopt participatory practices. This research presents findings of a bureaucratic readiness assessment for participatory governance in Bangladesh by exploring how public bureaucrats perceive the value of participation; how they are educated to collaborate with stakeholders; and the extent to which their attitudes are amenable to enhancing participatory governance. Our findings suggest that we can classify readiness in terms of both motivational and educational factors. The study has implications for how readiness can be developed in public officials that may assist in fostering participatory governance in Bangladesh and be informative to other countries experiencing similar issues.

Universalization, Sustainability and “Justiceness” of Primary Education: Perspectives and Lessons from Uganda

“…They tend to shape the policy process at institutional level based on their own interests. Therefore, policy development and implementation are complex and must be seen as a dialectic process in which all stakeholders will be involved in shaping its development (Waheduzzaman, Van Gramberg & Ferrer, 2018). Because education reforms require a lot of consultations with various stake holders (Waheduzzaman et al, 2018) due to limited or no consultations, some primary schools in Uganda continue to ignore, refuse and in most cases only apply some of the UPE educational policy directives.…”

Attempting to Cultivate Mindsets for Boundary Spanning in Remote Indigenous Policy

“…This focus on individual agency is extended by Waheduzzaman et al. (:16) who posit a three pronged approach to assessing ‘bureaucratic readiness for participatory governance’. This includes the more usual factors of ‘educational readiness’ (knowledge and understanding) and ‘structural readiness’ (including supportive delegation and accountability mechanisms).…”

“…) to participatory governance (Waheduzzaman et al. ), and from barriers due to structural issues (Carey and Harris ) to that of individual capacity (Wilkins et al. ).…”

“…Research interest is also turning to what is required to overcome the barriers to effective collaboration, and this journal is no exception. As with all evolving fields of research, the focus has been wide ranging -from whole-ofgovernment collaboration (Carey et al 2017) to participatory governance (Waheduzzaman et al 2017), and from barriers due to structural issues (Carey and Harris 2016) to that of individual capacity (Wilkins et al 2016).…”

“…I find that there were two main conceptions -one rooted in managerialism and one in community development ideas and that the differentiating factor was experience working outside the public sector. I draw on the concept put forward by Waheduzzaman et al (2017) of 'motivational readiness' (16), as well as social practice research, to suggest that an examination of the way policy actors understand key terms can provide important insights into their openness to changed ways of working. I therefore suggest that those espousing community development ideas are potentially more open to collaboration and that the current strong focus just on training for collaboration, while necessary, may not be sufficient.…”