Citizens’ Perceptions On The Status Of County Governance Practices: A Case Of Migori County, Kenya

ABSTRACT

Governance is the process of decision-making and how those decisions are implemented. Good governance involves quality public service delivery, accountable-decision-making, and civic engagement. Devolution helps make good governance feasible. Kenya thus adopted devolution to improve governance and catalyse development to the local levels. Since enactment of the constitution in 2010 however, the status of governance in the local governments has not been done and documented - especially from the perspectives of the citizens. The purpose of this study thus was to find out and analyze the citizens’ perceptions on the status of governance in Migori County and recommend policy options to enhance good governance. This study was guided by public choice theory in analysis of the political system and citizen perceptions. The study adopted a case study research design where a diverse case of two sub counties (Nyatike and Suba West Sub County) was used. The sub counties were selected purposively. Nyatike Sub County has the most administrative units, while Suba west Sub County has the least administrative units of the 8 sub counties. Target population of the study was 453,362, the adult population of the county, and the accessible population (N) was 17,348, which is the adult population in the two sub counties that visited the county offices for services from 2013 to 2016. From this, a sample of 156 was sampled for the survey by disproportionate stratified sampling and simple random sampling where 78 citizens were selected from each sub county. Two focus group discussions were also conducted, one from each sub county using 12 participants each, selected purposively by six chiefs in each of the sub counties. Structured questionnaires and focus group discussion guide were the instruments of data collection. The instruments were given to experts for validation. The questionnaire was pilot tested on 16 residents at Ndhiwa sub-County in the neighboring county to ensure reliability. A Cronbach alpha value of 0.860 was attained which exceeded the recommended level of 0.700, thereby indicating reliability. Quantitative data was analysed using percentages, difference, means, paired t test and Hotelling’s t squared test at 5% significance level by the help of STATA software. On the qualitative data, thematic content analysis and constant comparison analysis were used by the help of Weft.qda software. The findings indicate dissatisfaction on the status of governance in both sub counties, and also a difference in perceptions of citizens from the two sub counties with citizens from Nyatike Sub County expressing significantly more dissatisfaction compared to those from Suba West Sub County. The findings of this study are of importance to the policy practitioners and county government officials in their bid of enhancing good governance.