Enhancing Public Participation in Governance for Sustainable Development: Evidence From Bungoma County, Kenya

The use of PP in government policy formulation, decision making as well as the implementation of government programs has been embraced by many countries in the world. Kenya is among the recent developing economies that legally adopted PP through the promulgation of the new constitution a decade ago that ushered in PP. Despite this, its efficiency has staggered as information regarding public involvement in governance is still limited. We present the analysis of challenges facing the integration of public participation in governance and their impact on sustainable development. We use primary data from Bungoma County in Kenya, and SEM techniques that encompassed the CFA test to validate variables, path analysis to model perceived underlying direction of causality amid the constructs, and impact estimation using the coefficient estimator of SEM regression. The study finds PP significantly impacting on governance for H1, public participation meaningfully influences sustainable development (SD) for H2, governance considerably moderates the PP-SD relationship for H3, and the PP-Governance interaction process substantially supports SD. The study recommends consolidation of public awareness through civic education to strengthen understanding of their civil role in governance, timely notice as well as equitable facilitation in attending government development forums. Further, in enhancing PP functionality, the study suggests institutionalization by establishing the Office of Public Participation Rapporteur (OPP) responsible for collecting citizen and leaders’ views, and implementation of associated policies and regulations.