Civic Engagement Practice at Planning and Monitoring System by Local Government (s) of Nepal

Civic engagement stays an integral part of democracy, where citizen participates in government-led planning and monitoring process. This paper explored the current practices and underlying barriers of civic engagement at local government’s planning and monitoring set-up adopting Arnstein’s Ladder of Citizen Participation. Paper is based on responses from Local Government (s) on open-ended questionnaire. Considering the mandate of planning process, civic engagement at community level planning is high. The engagement level at ward level and municipal level remained from non-participation to tokenism level, where the partnerships and delegation of power to citizen, is yet to be effectively exercised. Paper emphasizes on need of civic engagement to build ownership and trust towards government mechanism