Implications of Public Participation in Promo...

Implications of Public Participation in Promoting Democratic Accountability in Budgeting Process a Systematic Review of Existing Literature and Future Research Directions

Author Name : Logiel Lokwawi Samson, Augustine Lokwang Ekitela, Professor John Ndefru

ABSTRACT Assessment of implication of public participation in promoting democratic accountability in the budgeting process has drawn a lot of interest from researchers and government experts across the world. This has been necessitated byincorporation of values, norms and principles of public participation in governments and institutional legal and policy frameworks since its inception inPorto-Alegre, Brazil.The study adopted systematic literature review methodology which analyses the body of knowledge on the public participation and budgeting process and interconnectedness in the context of democratic accountability. The review analyses datasets of 47 studies focusing on the impact of public participation on the budgeting process selected through visualization and snowballing approach. Most of scholarly datasets were retrieved from google scholar, Scopus, research gate and ProQuest from 1998-2024. Based on the descriptive analysis, 84% academic papers published from 2010 to 2015 were co-authored between the government experts and scholars in academic space while 16% of the articles were authored by single authors from North and South America, while Africa reported low publications. Furthermore, methodology review revealed that,most of the studies utilized case study designs while few adopted multistagesampling technique,explanatory study design and systematic study design whose findings showed a strong relationship between variables under investigation as per evidenced revealed by analysis of empirical review. The study recommended future studies to adopt accurate, robust estimation and specification techniques such as robust causality test, regression model and cointegration model to generate precise, accurate and reliable data. Moreso, future studies to explore comparative study of marginalized communities to establish why despite communities participating in budgeting process still reporthigh poverty rate, high malnutrition rate and illiteracy level cases.