8. The Citizen’s Charter in Nepal: An Effort to Achieve Quality of Governance at the Local Level

The citizen’s charter in Nepal is an innovative approach to upgrading the performance of local governance. Its implementation is expected to establish uniformity, standardization, predictability, and neutrality in public service provision, and to reduce nepotism and favoritism in the system. This chapter is based on a case study involving a quantitative method. The findings reveal that (i) there is greater clarity of information after the implementation of the citizen’s charter, (ii) that public access to officials, municipal human resource capabilities for service delivery, and overall service quality are improving, and that (iii) citizens’ participation and advocacy are insignificant in service delivery. Out of the independent variables—organizational, cultural, and political—the organizational variables had the most influence on the performance of the municipality, followed by the cultural variables. The political variables had the least influence. All things considered, the quality of governance, understood in terms of impartiality and transparency in delivering local services, was found to be gradually improving after the implementation of the citizen’s charter.