Elusive Public Participation: Citizen Decision-Making in Budget Formulation Process in the City of Harare, Zimbabwe

Masvaure, Steven

doi:10.1007/s12132-016-9297-5

Cited by 3 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Local people are not consulted about resource allocation in between elections. These findings are strongly corroborated by assessments in Vietnam, Malawi, Bangladesh, Peru, and Zimbabwe as pointed out by Fritzen (2006), Tambulasi and Kayuni (2007) Panday (2011;, McNulty andGarcia (2019), andMasvaure (2016) respectively. The paucity of strong empirical evidence of improved participation under decentralization has led Andrews and De Vries (2007, 447) to conclude that "the expectation that decentralization will enhance participation seems to be based mostly on 'faith' instead of empirical evidence."…”

Section: Decentralization and Participation: A Brief Overview Of Theo...supporting

confidence: 69%

“…On the whole, the theoretical discussions suggest that, by providing spaces for direct participation, decentralization remedies the ailments of representative democracy and effectively connect participation, decentralization, and efficiency (Andrews and De Vries 2007;Masvaure 2016). Hart (1972) and Maksimovska and Stojkov (2019) explain that decentralization not only ensures that decisions are reached democratically but that it offers citizens a double gain of both participation and responsive policy outputs.…”

Section: Decentralization and Participation: A Brief Overview Of Theo...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, Bergh (2004) questioned this finding, arguing that participation was defined very narrowly, that is participation in local elections. But decentralization tends to perform poorly in countries where citizen participation is merely limited to elections (Jütting et al, 2004;Masvaure 2016). Participation of the people in the election of local leaders alone is not enough and does not empower the majority of the people (Crook and Sverrisson 2001;Dufhues et al 2015).…”

Section: Decentralization and Participation: A Brief Overview Of Theo...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Direct citizens' participation is considered the most effective way of involving them in the decision-making processes (Andrews and De Vries 2007;Crook and Sverrisson 2001). This is the kind of participation decentralized governance seeks to engender (Masvaure 2016;Faguet and Shami 2022). However, it appears structural resource constraints have made it challenging for the Nadowli-Kaleo and Atwima Kwanwoma District Assemblies to directly involve citizens in the planning and decision-making processes.…”

Section: Representative Participationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Decentralization and Pro-poor Participation in Ghana: Unmasking the Barriers to Inclusive Grassroots Development

Be-ere

2022

St Comp Int Dev

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Donors have strongly advocated decentralization on the grounds that it broadens the participation of citizens in development processes, thereby increasing government responsiveness to their needs. Although there have been studies seeking to establish the veracity of this claim, they remain weak on two fronts. One, while wealth differentials affect citizen participation, these studies approach citizens as a homogenous group. Two, participation is mostly viewed narrowly—participation in elections. Drawing on empirical data from Ghana’s decentralization reform, this paper addresses these gaps by questioning how pro-poor citizen participation in decentralized development planning has been. I argue that although Ghana’s decentralization was propagated on championing pro-poor grassroots participation in governance and development, in reality, participation is elitist and has failed to reflect the voices of the poor. My findings demonstrate that the participation structures and processes used in local development planning are unfavourable to the poor in many respects. Elite and representative participation is promoted to the detriment of broad citizen participation. This exclusion is resulting in surging apathy of citizens towards the district assemblies—institutions hitherto trusted as their development champions. This paper concludes that the poor will remain voiceless despite decentralization unless the structural barriers to their participation are tackled in decentralization design and praxis.

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Section: Decentralization and Participation: A Brief Overview Of Theo...supporting

confidence: 69%

Section: Decentralization and Participation: A Brief Overview Of Theo...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Decentralization and Participation: A Brief Overview Of Theo...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Representative Participationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Decentralization and Pro-poor Participation in Ghana: Unmasking the Barriers to Inclusive Grassroots Development

Be-ere

2022

St Comp Int Dev

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A qualitative framework for data collection and analysis in Participation processes

Marzouki

Mellouli

Daniel

2019

Proceedings of the 20th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research

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The Identification of Stakeholders’ Living Contexts in Stakeholder Participation Data: A Semantic, Spatial and Temporal Analysis

Marzouki

Mellouli

Daniel

2022

Land

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Stakeholders’ Participation (SP) aims to involve stakeholders in decision-making processes about significant choices affecting their organizations, cities, or communities. Stakeholders’ participation is maintained through SP processes (SPPs) that may be traditional (e.g., physical assemblies) or online (e.g., online forums). Whether traditional or online, the purpose of SPPs is to collect and analyze data in a way that it would bring a benefit to a given decision-making process. In SPPs, stakeholders try to communicate (a part of) their living contexts, i.e., to present their objectives, daily problems, intentions, and issues they are facing within their environment. A major challenge of decision-makers is then to ensure that the living contexts of stakeholders are considered in SPPs for an effective implementation of project and policies. This paper focuses on the specific issue of the “stakeholders’ living context identification” and attempts to account for how stakeholders implicitly identify their living contexts in their SP comments. Based on a qualitative analysis of SP data from four case studies in two countries, this paper identified a set of semantic, spatial, and temporal patterns allowing to capture the stakeholders’ living contexts in SPPs data. Moreover, a conceptual model emphasizing the importance for decision-makers to capture and understand semantic, spatial, and temporal dimensions in SPPs is proposed.

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Elusive Public Participation: Citizen Decision-Making in Budget Formulation Process in the City of Harare, Zimbabwe

Cited by 3 publications

References 11 publications

Decentralization and Pro-poor Participation in Ghana: Unmasking the Barriers to Inclusive Grassroots Development

Decentralization and Pro-poor Participation in Ghana: Unmasking the Barriers to Inclusive Grassroots Development

A qualitative framework for data collection and analysis in Participation processes

The Identification of Stakeholders’ Living Contexts in Stakeholder Participation Data: A Semantic, Spatial and Temporal Analysis

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