Effects Of Public Participation On Policy Implementation: Case Of Elgeyo Marakwet County, Kenya

ABSTRACT

Policy implementation is actualization of governments’ plans and programs as an answer to societal

problems. It is a reaction by the government to the socio-economic problems affecting the residents

of Elgeyo Marakwet county which is a semi-arid region in North Rift at the floor of rift valley of

Kenya. The research was a case study done at Kabiemit ward that exhibits general population

character of Elgeyo Marakwet county. In emulation to other researches done by development agents

the researcher sought to determine effects of participation on policy implementation in effort to

address the root cause of socio – economic problem mooted by poverty in the region. Policy

implementation is successful if sufficient and effective participation by stakeholders is done in a

free and secure environment It’s focused on general policy implementation. The researcher

investigated how participation affects implementation and then use the findings to improve on

policy implementation. Two variables, policy implementation which was dependent variable and

participation the independent variable with environment as the moderating variables have been

used. Objectives were; to find out the effects of representation on policy implementation, to

examine the effects of information exchange on policy implementation, to find out the effect of

stakeholder interaction on policy implementation and to find out the effects of environmental

moderation on relationship between participation and policy implementation. H01: suggested that

there is no relationship between participation and policy implementation while H02: Information

exchange has no significant effect on policy implementation and the third hypothesis H03,

Suggested that stakeholder interaction has no effect on implementation. Research questions sought

to answer or confirm the hypothesis above. The researcher preferred to use both research questions

and hypothesis in this study. Most of government projects fail at early stages. The study sought to

unravel the root cause of project failure and use the knowledge acquired to reverse under

development in the area. The researcher used two theories to explain the situation, the Social

Exchange theory as lead theory and the New Public Management theory. Conceptual framework

showed the interaction between the variable and their indicators. The study used cross -sectional

research design and descriptive statistics to explain the phenomenon. The target population was 410

adult residents of Kabiemit ward that attend public participation in the past as per past records in

attendance registers of past sessions. A 10% of this was the study sample selected through simple

random sampling. Questionnaires were used to get data that was analyzed using (SPSS) statistical

package for social sciences version 23 and Spearman’s coefficient to illustrate relationship between

the variables and present the findings for easy interpretation. The findings can used in improving

policy implementation in future and inform the government of what to do to correct already stalled

policies in the area. From the findings, majority of the respondents (65.9%) reported that there is a

policy implementation within the community while only 34.1% disagreed that policy

implementation within the community is not evident. There are factors that inhibit policy

implementation which include existence of competition among different stakeholders, conflict of

interest, mistrust among stakeholders and poor management. The study therefore recommends that

the government makes use of more platforms when informing the public on the date, time, venue

and topic of discussion and also on the relevance of the topic to the local people. It also

recommends that proper monitoring and evaluation mechanisms be implemented with sufficient

resources to ensure that policy implementation is successful. Regression result showed that

increase in presentation by one unit would have a corresponding unit in policy representation

equivalent to 0.463 units.