Citizen engagement is a very uneven experience in many local governments. Local managers may endorse citizen involvement in governance in theory, but they may lack incentives for engagement in practice. From advisory committees to planning and zoning commissions, from town hall meetings and citizen surveys to the three-minute microphone statements, there are many options for citizens to be involved.

Managers and staff can glean valuable feedback from residents about program performance, capital project designs, and resource opportunities when they create and practice a genuine culture of meaningful engagement. As trust in local government follows a declining curve that has begun to mimic trust in federal and state governments, managers might find some inspiration for increasing trust from citizen experiences in local government budgeting practices in Kenya.

Local Governments in Kenya

The government of Kenya—and the people of Kenya—take citizen engagement seriously. Governance reforms in Kenya’s 2010 Constitution created a devolved governance model with a central government and 47 new sovereign county governments. County governments were given wide political, administrative, and fiscal autonomy in governing their affairs and their local communities.¹ Each county has two branches: a governor elected at-large to lead and manage the executive offices, and a county assembly elected by ward.²

The implementation of the 2010 constitution of Kenya began after the 2013 general elections that enacted the devolved system of governments, including election of local governing members and institutionalization of local structures.³ While the national government retains authority for the police, military, education, and national roads, responsibility was devolved to county governments for infrastructure, planning and economic development, fire and ambulance, libraries, parks and other cultural facilities, and healthcare.⁴ Some counties have begun to devolve further by recreating municipal governments that were dissolved in 2010.

Kenya’s 2010 constitutional amendments also developed fiscal reforms mandating citizen participation and performance-based budgeting.⁵ Constitutional provisions articulate public participation as a fundamental right of all citizens. The implementing laws mandate that citizens be able to express their preferences in project prioritization and budgetary allocations with direct engagement in the planning and budgeting processes of local (i.e., county) governments. The County Government Act of 2012 further stipulates structural arrangements of public participation at the lowest village levels.⁶

Legislating participation was only the first step in empowering citizens in local decision-making. The counties have been experimenting with several citizen participation frameworks to engage and collect public input in budget decision-making since 2013. There are lessons to share after a decade of active citizen participation.

Meaningful Citizen Engagement

Research on citizen participation in the United States and elsewhere has established that combinations of participatory processes, mechanisms, outcomes, and environmental factors explain variations in who participates, how they participate, and at what levels they participate. In the last six years, we have been conducting field research to explore whether and how citizens are empowered, well-informed, and engaged to influence county budgetary decisions in Kenya. In 2016 and 2017, we attended standing-room-only budget forums in different counties. Citizens asked questions to the budget staff and assembly members about capital projects such as shelters for bus stops, the number of health clinics and the lack of drugs and equipment in the new health clinics, and the poor quality of road resurfacing. In other meetings, residents berated budgeting staff that provided no documents and no transparency for the budget information they had a constitutional right to access.

Although active citizen engagement in many counties just meets minimum legal requirements, several exemplary counties provide citizens with multiple opportunities to share their needs and priorities, including town hall meetings, focus groups, citizen committees, and citizen surveys. Moreover, citizens in several counties have taken it upon themselves to learn budgeting techniques and practices by frequently attending budget forums, with a significant number of them going through voluntary budget training and capacity-building initiatives with the International Budget Partnership Kenya (IBPK).⁷ Residents in some counties, together with county officials, have created social media groups to share information and deliberate on local matters. For example, WhatsApp groups are a common platform where residents audit their governments by sharing photos of the status of capital projects, inform residents about public forums, and demand accountability for resource utilization. County officials also rely on social media groups to gain a better understanding of residents’ perceptions about their policies and actions.

In the context of citizen participation in budgeting, our research suggests that meaningful engagement depends on participatory transparency. When exploring citizen participation in county budgeting in 2018, we asked citizens to share their experiences with the processes, mechanisms, and outcomes of engagement during budgeting. We learned that meaningful engagement requires that (1) citizens are given access to relevant information before participating in budgeting discussions, and (2) citizens must be allowed to participate at different levels of decision-making processes. As manifested in Kenyan counties, participatory transparency encompasses the following factors:

Access to relevant information meant that citizens were provided with past expenditure reports and the proposed budgetary documents to cross-examine the implementation progress of previous capital project decisions and the current requests. The information is, and should be, presented in a non-technical format, as it is for citizen budgets, to help laypeople read, process, and use it to inform their needs and priorities. Furthermore, timely access to information helped them align their priorities with proposed decisions and use their knowledge of community needs to advocate for changes where necessary.

Access to participation was crucial for citizens to voice their priorities and concerns. Since public meetings are the commonly used engagement approach, there was overwhelming support for decentralized participation forums. Village- and ward-level public forums offered most residents inexpensive and accessible (in terms of distance) participation opportunities compared to those held at sub-county and county levels. Furthermore, decentralized public forums led residents to feel included in the process, even in regions where participation was tokenistic.

The Engaged Budgeting Model

Participatory transparency is central to our engaged budgeting model, informed by the specific roles of government and citizens in yielding participatory outcomes for both parties. As Figure 1 illustrates, governments must take an active role in providing reliable information to the public and reducing the obstacles to participation, which would in turn empower citizens to be informed about government decisions and access participation forums.

One of the distinctions between counties practicing engaged budgeting and those taking a minimalist approach is a bureaucratic culture that takes the information to where the citizens are—not waiting for citizens to find their way to the bureaucracy to state their preferences. For example, the member of county assembly (MCA) in a ward in Kisumu County, who also happened to be the county assembly budget committee’s chairperson, made sure that residents have access to all relevant budget documents through the ward office at no charge. The ward office is a central place for residents to share their needs and priorities with the area MCA and obtain timely policy decisions as they are released at the county level. Moreover, the MCA empowered residents to form community groups, (such as water committees, education committees, and youth committees, etc.) and advocate for community needs based on the common areas of interests. In this particular ward, residents were more optimistic about their engagement experiences compared to other regions in Kisumu County.

A major barrier to engaged budgeting is the lack of citizen access to the room where it happens. Forums and open meetings scheduled midday at city hall systematically exclude residents who lack the flexibility to leave work or family responsibilities. Meetings where residents must travel a distance may not have funds for transportation, excluding lower-income residents. A process that invites residents into a neighborhood meeting, but then relies on bureaucrats to carry their message forward to higher levels of decision-making, risks diluting or otherwise misrepresenting the neighborhood’s perspective.

In contrast, Makueni County’s budget process is a bottom-up model (cluster system) where citizens’ priorities are an accumulation of projects from the village, ward, sub-county, and county levels (see Figure 2).⁸ Developed by an engagement culture, Makueni County’s approach not only provides multiple opportunities for residents to participate and voice their concerns, but it also ensures diverse regional needs are reflected in final decisions. It emphasizes the synthesis of access to all the rooms where decisions are made with transparency in local village languages and multiple mediums. The bottom-up approach reduces the cost of participation to lower-income residents. The county also financially supports representatives elected by neighbors to represent them throughout the process—independent of the elected member of the county assembly—providing the neighborhood with ears and eyes as well as a voice at the table. The outcomes for citizens in this type of process were more than meaningful citizen participation; they could see priorities being funded and this increased their trust in their local government.

Our research indicates that citizens choose to participate because they believe in the opportunity to influence budgetary decisions on issues that affect them. However, budgeting is a complex process. Adequate comprehension of the process and information requires repeat participation of citizens to master the vocabulary and glean insights about the process of budgeting. Figure 1 associates participatory transparency with participatory outcomes in our model. When coupled with skills training, participants’ knowledge about budgets and budgeting processes can improve.

Budget Advocacy and Civic Education in Kenya

The International Budget Partnership Kenya (IBPK) advocates for credible, meaningful budgeting practices by pushing county governments to make public all the necessary budgetary information and provide opportunities for citizens to participate in the county budget-making process. Moreover, the IBPK has been providing civic education and budget training to citizens across the country as a means of empowering them with knowledge and skills for interrogating budgetary information and pushing for community-based needs and priorities. To date, the NGO has trained over 870 designated budget champions and 60 designated budget facilitators who are spread over 36 counties and unified through four regional hubs. Budget facilitators are leaders of county-level civic engagement activities during budget decision-making processes. Budget champions are community-based influencers who mobilize citizens and support collective learning, analysis, and generation of citizen proposals related to budget decisions.

The IBPK training focuses on various aspects of local governance and budgeting. Volunteers selected from wards and villages go through intensive skills training that covers:

1. The separate roles and shared functions of the national and county governments.

2. The budget cycle.

3. The necessary budget documents to be made publicly available.

4. The sources of government revenues and revenue sharing principles.

Participating volunteers are equipped with necessary skills of reading budgetary items, examining the public justification for budgeted programs, and how to make rational choices and priorities during public participation. ⁹ Both the budget facilitators and champions use their newly equipped skills to train and empower others in the community in understanding the importance of public participation and how to engage effectively.

Key Takeaways for Local Governments Around the World

Local governments that desire improved citizen satisfaction and trust in their stewardship of their communities must provide meaningful public engagement through participatory transparency. Governments need to ensure the public has access to relevant information, can access public participation forums that are inexpensive and are within their reach, and that the public is engaged in different stages of decision-making processes.

First, government/budget officials should increase citizen accessibility by taking information about proposed capital projects, program evaluations, program revisions, and other matters to where citizens are— and when they are available: near their homes, on different days, and at different times. Find them in service club meetings, PTA/PTO meetings, video meetings over lunch hours, and on different dates. Increasing access to information this way simultaneously increases access to participation in all stages of the budgeting process. When Makueni County brings budgeting engagement to the village level, it leads to increased participation of villagers at higher stages of the process.

Second, the quality of budgeting information matters. Producing budget documents that align with the GFOA budget presentation award¹⁰ ensures information is provided within a policy context, with multiyear data in graphic and textual formats, glossaries of terms, and tables of content that make navigating the document easier and more comprehendible. So is providing budget information that is non-technical for lay citizens to be informed about government programs, decisions, and plans. Many residents distrust their governments because they cannot determine how their tax dollars (or Kenya Shillings) are being spent in addressing community needs and interests. By providing clear budget information, governments can increase the trust of their residents.

Third, civic education is crucial in empowering residents with knowledge and skills of public budgeting. Kenya’s constitution provides the public the right to be involved in government decisions on issues that affect them, but without the necessary skills, the public would be limited in asking the right questions. There is no doubt that the International Budget Partnership Kenya (IBPK) is filling this gap, as many residents are learning how to read and evaluate budgetary decisions. Skilled residents feel more empowered to attend public forums and represent their community in advocating for resources and developmental needs. A quick glance at the training session videos (see note 10) reveals easy parallels for other local governments.

In the United States, the overlapping jurisdictions for taxpayers is confusing, and city managers often get blamed for issues that are another jurisdiction’s decision or issue. Part 2 of module 1 in the IBP video is devoted to training residents about which jurisdiction is responsible for which service and who is accountable. This is preparatory work for residents to know the limited scope of the municipal budget for which they wish to influence allocations. Part 3 of module 1 is also preparatory training, explaining which revenues the local governments control and which they do not. Investing in this civic education is a worthwhile investment for local government managers to help residents understand the fiscal and statutory environments in which their budget allocations can be made.

Conclusion

Citizens want to be informed, empowered, and engaged in decision-making processes in ways that they can attribute their voices to final decisions. Implementing an engaged budgeting model can help local governments meet the necessary conditions for meaningful engagement and yield positive outcomes in decision-making processes. The requirements are basic and cost little.

Most importantly, our Kenyan research suggests that engaged budgeting is, at the core, a question of intention and commitment. Engaged budgeting requires a culture of engagement whereby staff are encouraged to work beyond legal obligations to find out what residents think about what the local government is doing, thinking of doing, or evaluating. They schedule engagement sessions at the convenience of residents rather than staff. They approach uncomfortable resident questions with curiosity instead of defensiveness. What does the resident really want to know, and how can you provide that information—perhaps even more—to oblige their democratic right? A culture of engagement does the following:

• Keeps the public regularly informed about government decisions, actions, and plans.

• Adopts transparency measures that ensure the public can access relevant information with minimum efforts.

• Designs and implements (multiple) public engagement mechanisms that reflect the composition of residents within the local jurisdiction.

• Empowers residents to access public participation activities and change or influence final decisions based on their needs and preferences.

• Provides feedback to the public on how their input contributed to the final decisions, what was taken into consideration, and what ought to be considered in the future.

The positive participation experiences of many Kenyan citizens in their local budget process are beacons for meaningful engagement practices in local budgeting in other jurisdictions.

FRANKLINE MUTHOMI is an assistant professor of public administration at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, USA.

KURT THURMAIER, PhD, is a distinguished engagement professor of public administration at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois, USA.

Endnotes and Resources

¹ Key provisions are in Articles 10, 174, 201, and 232 of the Constitution. See Chapter 11 on Devolved Government. It provides the objectives, functions, powers, and structures of devolved governments.

² Article 196 of the Constitution of Kenya 2010 stipulates the powers and privileges of the County Assembly. According to the County Government Act of 2012, the County Assembly is composed of elected members representing the number of electoral Wards, six nominated members representing marginalized groups, and the speaker who is an ex officio member.

³ See Nyambura, Joyce and Jason Grant, “County Government Structure in Kenya: An overview of the local government structure in Kenya, ICMA, April 26, 2022 https://icma.org/articles/article/county-government-structure-kenya

⁴ See https://afrocave.com/role-of-county-governments/#devolved-functions-in-kenya.

⁵ The Constitution of Kenya was inaugurated on August 27th, 2010 as the supreme law. However, active implementation was after the 2013 general elections which officiated the devolved system of governments, election of local governing members, and institutionalization of local structures. Key provisions are in Articles 10, 174, 201, and 232.

⁶ County Government Act of 2012.

⁷ https://internationalbudget.org/country/kenya/

⁸ Read more about Public Participation Framework in Makueni County: https://makueni.go.ke/public-participation-framework/

⁹ See the Kenya County Budget Training Workshop conducted by the International Budget Partnership Kenya (IBPK): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuAL7CEtZWbouu7aKydlKt6_CEzWkiYf-

¹⁰ https://www.gfoa.org/budget-award