Effectiveness of Public Councils as a mechanism for citizen engagement in local policy making

Abstract

Governments are responding to growing pressure to increase accountability, transparency and citizen engagement. A review of citizen engagement literature reveals various ways of interaction between government and citizens, and also highlights the importance of holding government accountable and open for inclusive economic growth and social well-being. In this regard, in December 2015 Kazakhstan approved the timely Public Councils’ Law to enhance the transparency of state decision making and promote citizen engagement. In this paper, the focus is on how public councils have been effective in fulfilling their role as a consultative mechanism for government oversight, and identification of barriers and catalysts for successful implementation of Public Councils. In order to achieve these objectives, OECD evaluation framework with ten suggested criteria on government-citizen engagement were used on Public Council of Almaty city and Atyrau region. The findings state noticeably different implementation of Public Councils in Almaty city and Atyrau region mainly because the Law is quite general, and thus allows room for different interpretation. Qualitative research methods such as interviews with Public Council members, observations by attending Public Council meetings and secondary data analysis were used to collect the data for the research. Furthermore, evidence obtained from the research proposes recommendations on amendments to the Law and specific suggestions on operational improvements of the work of Public Councils.