Importance Of Citizen Participation

Citizen participation is a distinct concept to different people in different places all around the world. Basically the civic duty of citizens is to vote, influence governance through consumer choice, the demand driven aggregation, exit and voice outcomes. The civic duty of citizens as voters and subjects of the political system has no doubt been increasingly challenged by the view that citizens have a legitimate right to have a say in governance processes that affect them and that this right should be guaranteed institutionally. Citizen or Public participation is the process by which public concerns, needs and values are incorporated into governmental decision making (Creighton 2005). Public participation is also seen as an essential means

Many public research on citizen participation confirm that participation leads to more participation even when citizens become doubtful about government. Citizen participation within an association, as part of a group, or in a community is likely to result in an embellish sense of efficiency, which will in turn, encourages further citizen participation. Most predominant systems of government, citizens are allowed to participate only by voting once in several years. This in one way or the other separate politicians from their electors. Lack of ability and corrupt politicians are not rare and vital decisions are made behind the scenes from the knowledge of most citizens. In developed and developing countries citizen’s participation by introducing citizens' rights to initiate laws, to call referenda and to be consulted on (local and minor) decisions has gone some small way to compensate for these deficits of "representative" democracy. The ideal that all members of a community or country should be able to participate in reaching common decisions has often been dismissed as impractical, especially where large populations are concerned and also for other reasons. It is practically impossible to conceive a town meeting for a town like Moscow or even for Accra. However, in this modern world with modern technologies it is possible for all citizens to inform and educate themselves about public issues and to vote or decide on them electronically. However, one vital problem of this assessment is that most people are technology illiterate and therefore finds it difficult use such technology. In this era of modern Information and Communication Technology (Internet), access to information has vastly increased as well as the speed and volume of communication. The Internet and the World Wide Web contain much political information and