Publications

The difficulty with service delivery remains a hard task to resolve among devolved governments. Implementation of devolution has resulted inmixed outcomes. While in some regions it is tipped as a model for improving service delivery, in other areas it has failed to deliver its mandatedfunctions. Inadequately distributed resources, un-prioritised services, poor health and education and housing and roads among others are majorproblems affecting both urban and rural counties alike. Devolution as a system of governance was introduced after the promulgation of the newconstitution in 2010 to respond to the public demand for an efficient and effective public sector. However, 10 years after this move, the efficiencyand effectiveness in service delivery has continued to face many bottlenecks at the resource distribution, citizen participation accountability andtransparency and service delivery as identified in the literature review. This article aimed at analyzing the effect of devolution system of governanceon service delivery in Uasin Gishu County in Kenya. Various theories were explored linked to the various variables considered under the study.These are: The Soufflé theory, The social capital theory, The principal Agent theory and lastly the Accountability theory. Eventually the soufflétheory was selected as being more responsive to the study’s variables as it gives the best explanation on linkages between various variables ofdevolved system of governance and how they are related to the outcomes, that is, service delivery. The conceptual framework outlines theindependent variables, as resource distribution, citizen participation accountability and transparency while the dependent variable is servicedelivery. Study took a quantitative approach that emphasizes objective measurements and statistical, numerical analysis of data. The study adopted descriptive and correlation research designs to facilitate determination and explanation of variable relationships and used a simple random sampleof 154 respondents obtained from a target population of 3,125 employees of Uasin Gishu County. The sampling frame consisted of county executivemembers and employees, member of county assembly office staff, county assembly service board members, county governor officers and countygovernment staff. Regression analysis, multiple regression and correlation were run to determine the relationship between resource distribution,citizen participation accountability and transparency and service delivery following a multivariate regression model. It was established thatdevolved system of governance and all its three components were satisfactory predictors of service delivery having significantly strong effects. Thestudy concludes that devolution devolved system of governance (R-square of 0.482; p value <0.05) has effect on service delivery and can be a crucialmodel of improving public service delivery in Kenya. The article recommended that devolved system of governance can be effective model forimproving service delivery.