Practicality of Stakeholder Participation in the Local Government Budgeting System in Zambia

Scholarly Research Paper from the year 2012 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Region: Africa, grade: A, Atlantic International University (School of Business and Economics), course: Government Budgeting, language: English, abstract: The paper focuses on the extent of stakeholder participation in budget making process at the local government. In the context of the study, the term stakeholder mean persons, institutions, organizations and groups of people who have direct or indirect interest in the budgeting process at any or all levels of the governance s structure and activities thereof. The paper provides an analysis on the practicality of stakeholder participation or simply participatory budgeting in the local government system in Zambia using Kabwe Municipal Council as case study. An analysis of the challenges that the Government at the level of local government faces in its quest to incorporate participatory budgeting at the local level is also presented. The direction of the paper focuses mainly on the general assessment of the conditions for effective participatory budgeting and its impact on the stakeholder community. Kabwe Municipal Council was ideally suitable for the study as the first pilot council to have practiced participatory budgeting in Zambia. The primary focus in the Kabwe Municipal Council case study is on the extent to which stakeholder participation is promoted in the budgeting process by measuring the extent against the conditions for effective participation in the budgetary process as advocated by Wampler (2000) in his A Guide to Participatory Budgeting paper. This is done to inform the researcher on appropriate conditions that need to exist at the local level to ensure effective implementation of participatory budgeting in Zambia.The paper brings to light the notion of participatory budgeting as an on-going process that is linked to elements of direct and indirect democracy. It further proves that the concept does not reach its finality but is always developing as a step-by-step institutionalization of stakeholder participation in the budgeting process at the local level. The paper proves most of the participatory budgeting process in Kabwe Municipal Council to be in line with most of the pre-conditions of Wampler.The potential of participatory budgeting in Zambia is proved to be very much feasible but heavily depended on the political drive by the Government in power. The paper emphasizes facilitation of the immediate implementation of the Decentralization policy by Government as a precinct for participatory budgeting as it embraces most of the tenets of stakeholder participation in the budgeting process at the local government level.