PARTICIPATION WHERE IT MATTERS: EXAMINING THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES AND THEIR CITIZENS IN THE AGE OF DECENTRALIZATION

Today, participation of the citizenry is key to development in democratic countries. However, participation levels are not consistent across countries with similar central development strategies or even subnational units within one specific nation. Little information is known regarding why there is variability of participation under the same formal national development policy. A better understanding of what is associated with participation is needed. Therefore, with the help of previous work, the general research question this dissertation attempts to answer is, “What factors promote the public participation of citizens in developing nations?” In this study, public participation is defined as the exchange of information between citizens or citizen and public official either as positive support or negative disapproval. Based on an extensive literature review, this question was broken into three crucial sections: central government actions or decentralization in the countries of focus here, local characteristics, and local opinion. In order to address predictors of participation, this dissertation quantitatively examines the national and sub-national variables associated with local government relations in developing nations claiming a decentralized format. The countries of focus are included in the 35 African nations which participate in the Afrobarometer Survey. This survey is the heart of the analysis, but was supplemented with information from local budgets, auxiliary data, and case studies. Additionally, in order to perform the final quantitative analysis, factoring was needed to form the dimension of participation and those which impact it, allowing more nuanced assessments. The results were found to be mixed in terms of expected vs. realized strengths and direction of relationships, such as the negative relationships of fiscal power and fiscal decentralization with participation. In trying to understand what actually drives participation in the first place, the hope of this dissertation is that national governments and development organizations can now mold new strategies.