Citizen participation in local government: A case study of Safi

In the last quarter-century, attempts have been made worldwide to use innovative participatory opportunities and procedures to include new actors -outside of the state and the market- in creating public policies. The contemporary era has been termed the "Participation Age". Today's political spectrum views increasing citizens' voices as a crucial check on elite dominance and bureaucratic rationalism. Interest in studying citizen participation in local government affairs is due to domestic and international dynamics, including redefining citizens' roles in public policies, the paradigm shift from government to governance models, the right to participation, and the call for decentralization policies. This dissertation investigates factors accounting for citizen participation in local governments. Citizen participation refers to the range of activities through which citizens can exercise influence on public policies. This study adopts a comprehensive definition of citizen participation encompassing political, civic, and individual-based activities. The synthesis is justified by the rise of nonconventional forms and a broader understanding of participation. The original contribution of this dissertation is an empirical study of three forms of participation in the province of Safi, and an assessment of diverse factors and their impact on local governance in a developing country. It is widely asserted that socioeconomic factors and demographics play an influential part in citizens' decision to get involved in policy activities. Nevertheless, these factors lack in their examination the behavioral and attitudinal involvedness of participation, therefore, this dissertation focuses on behavioral and attitudinal factors of participation. The main question this dissertation tries to answer is: "What factors explain citizen participation?" And we seek explanations for local participation in the case of Morocco. In order to answer this question, the following factors were studied: democratic values, citizenship values, interests in politics, efficacy, social capital, utility, institutional design, and values orientation. These factors were developed from the theories of participation, covered in the theoretical framework. The dissertation uses a mix of qualitative and quantitative research techniques to collect data. Nine hypotheses were developed from the theoretical framework, and surveys were distributed to the local people in the province of Safi to test the research hypotheses. Binary logistic regression analysis is used as the analysis method of this study. This study has made valuable contributions to understanding attitudes and patterns of local participation in a developing country. The findings revealed that democratic values, efficacy, and values orientation are negatively related to citizen participation, while citizenship values, interest in local politics, social capital, utility, and institutional design are positively related to citizen participation.