Fredrick Otieno

Deepening Democracy Through State Devolved Funds Fredrick Otieno

The book Deepening Democracy at the Grassroots Level: Citizen Participation through State Devolved Funds (CDF) in Kenya broadly attempts an alternative path to democratization. Normative efforts on democratization have overly focused on visible events such as elections, constitutionalism and institutional reforms. Whereas such democratization efforts are justified, they are not in themselves sufficient to make democracy meaningful. This book focuses on a state devolved fund in Kenya (Constituency Development Fund) as a space through which democratization can be pushed further beyond such endeavors as regular elections, constitutional design and institutional reforms etc. and be made to resonate with citizens at the grassroots level?deepening democracy. The book concludes that the CDF program in Kenya still has structural bottlenecks which frustrate citizen participation, but when the state genuinely devolves such programs, democratic norms do thrive at the grassroots level.