The study builds upon empowerment theory and institutional theory in explaining the mechanism through which local regulatory governance influences the economic empowerment of women through CBO programs in Montserrado County, Liberia. Specifically, this study conceives of the local regulatory governance as the independent variable, the women’s economic empowerment as the dependent variable and effectiveness of CBO program implementation as the mediating variable in how regulatory governance can influence the outcome.

Empowerment Theory which is based on Rappaport’s [12] original formulation and subsequently revised and refined by Zimmerman [13] is used as the basis of understanding women’s economic empowerment, as it refers to the process of expanding the ability of individuals and groups to make strategic life choices by increasing their access to resources, opportunities, knowledge and decision-making power needed to enhance their social and economic standing. “Empowerment is defined as the expansion of people’s ability to make strategic life choices through the acquisition of resources, agency and achievement.” [3] Economic empowerment is therefore defined within development context as increase in income; possession of income-generating assets and employment; participation in micro finance, leadership, management and policy-making; as well as increased autonomy over finances and production processes and consumption levels. Within this context, the empowerment theory is applied to explain expected outcomes in relation to strong governance and developmental interventions; whereas women’s economic empowerment is measured through income, assets, employment, micro finance, and leadership. The empowerment theory predicts that achievement of empowerment will be obtained through enabling environments that facilitate women’s economic access and opportunities.

Institutional theory on the other hand developed by Meyer and Rowan [14] and further elaborated by DiMaggio and Powell [15] is used as the primary mechanism through the study explains the roles of regulatory authorities in the process of creating empowerment outcomes. Organizational success and achievement of outcomes are affected by formal institutions and regulatory bodies which entail rules, mechanisms for enforcement, monitoring and accountability mechanisms [16]. As stated by Butkeviciene and Sekliuckiene [17] organizations operate in institutional environment characterized by coercive, normative and mimetic pressures affecting the organizations’ activities and results. Regulatory authorities, on the other hand use coercive pressures in the form of laws, monitoring standards and enforcement mechanisms for CBO program implementations. In this context, local regulatory governance is explained by parameters like monitoring, enforcement of compliance, coordination and accountability, and transparency represented through regulation implementation of micro-finance, control and enforcement of health and education programs and regulation of agricultural inputs services.

Institutional theory predicts that regulatory authorities influence outcomes through creating and monitoring standards, compliance mechanism and stakeholders and ensuring accountability mechanisms and effective delivery of services which enhances effective program implementation thereby impacting upon women’s economic outcomes. CBO programs, within this context is not regarded as the driving force towards empowerment but rather the channel through which regulatory governance impacts upon women’s economic empowerment. This is because regulatory authorities create the conditions for effective CBO programs implementation through influence on how programs are funded, delivered and beneficiaries served as well as how accountability is achieved, while effectiveness in CBO programs implementation includes among others, proper resource utilization, participation, sustainability which influence positively the women’s access to economic resources and opportunities.

Combining the empowerment theory and institutional theory enable us to understand the relationships between independent, intervening and dependent variables. Institutional theory explains how regulatory authorities set the ground for effective program implementation. On the other hand, the empowerment theory explains how these are linked to improving women’s economic status. Hence, both theories as used in this study provide theoretical explanation to the link between local regulatory governance and economic empowerment of women through the intervening variable which is effectiveness of CBO program implementation.

Evidence from global literature demonstrates that regulatory capacity of local authorities can mediate relationship between CBO programmes and women’s economic empowerment. The regulatory functions such as monitoring, compliance enforcement, coordination, accountability and transparency seem to have correlation with alignment of programmes to national policies and in implementation of the programmes, management of duplications, and achievement of target objectives. Greater strength in such functions seems to yield highly structured implementation processes with clearer targeting of beneficiaries with better outcomes for women. Weak functioning seems to yield highly fragmented and uncoordinated programs with minimal accountability and poor outcomes for women.

The international empirical evidences fully back this conclusion through different countries. The studies reported by FAO clearly reveal that an efficient regulatory system of governing land and natural resources is correlated with improved access to productive assets of women, leading to the success of the empowerment initiative. According to Bremner et al. [18], lack of an efficient accountability system increases the possibility of mismanagement and weakens the effectiveness of development projects. However, contrary to these views, Bose and Khan [19] clearly revealed that efficient interaction among institutions leads to higher income generation of women through market linkages. The quality of governance correlates with performance outcome in general and women’s economic empowerment in particular.

The South Asian countries also exhibit this image. In his study, Prodip [20] finds that even if women are involved, there is no guarantee of results because of poorly implemented rules. The empirical evidence from India supports the relationship between bureaucratic hurdles, lack of clarity on institutional responsibilities, and absence of continuity in women-oriented programs, and the same can be seen for poor enforcement of the rules of participation in Bangladesh and its adverse implications on women’s participation, and unsuccessful expansion of women-owned enterprises despite being provided space.

African countries have confirmed such evidence. In the context of weak municipal service delivery in South Africa, weak accountability system, corruption and weak institutional capacity has been noted [21]. Monitoring systems that focus on compliance rather than performance is found to lead to programs failure [22]. Policy reforms implemented did not match women outcome since weak institutional framework in terms of its coordination and accountability mechanism in Kenya was the underlying cause [23]. Overall governance seems to be a crucial factor that explains performance of various programs targeted for women’s empowerment.

Similarly in Liberia, we confirm such evidence in relation to CBO programmes. Weak coordinated mechanism, poorly managed accountable systems and inadequate institutional capacity is reported as part of community-based intervention characteristics in Liberia [11][24], and that weakness of regulatory systems leads to poor performance and transparency of development programs [25]. In Montserrado County, overlap of initiatives, incoherent monitoring strategies and non-selective delivery of services to the intended beneficiaries seems to be contributing to weak program outcome for women’s economic empowerment.

Consistent links are observed across the world. The literature demonstrates that monitoring, compliance enforcement, coordination, accountability and transparency in CBOs shape women empowerment outcomes by influencing the operation of programs. It is shown to affect performance in terms of resource utilization, sustainability and beneficiary targeting. Projects in countries where the institution are not functioning strongly are depicted as underdeveloped and not being impactful for women.

A critical gap remains. Most studies utilize descriptive and cross-sectional research designs with very limited focus on regulatory authorities of local level governments as an explicit set of distinct governance functions and limited consideration given to the interplay between the mechanisms such as monitoring, compliance enforcement, coordination, accountability and transparency of the functioning of local authorities and the success of programs implementation and women’s economic empowerment in Liberia (particularly Montserrado county).

The conceptual framework considers local regulatory governance as independent variable and women’s economic empowerment as the dependent variable. Women’s economic empowerment comprises women’s financial independence, involvement in labor, participation in financial decision making, household food security. The conceptual framework is show in Figure 1Figure 1 below.

Source: Author (2025)

Figure 1.Conceptual framework for the study.

The conceptual framework is based on the assumption that local regulatory governance is linked to women’s economic empowerment through the effectiveness of Community-Based Organization (CBO) program implementation. Local regulatory governance is evidenced by the performance of governance activities such as monitoring, compliance enforcement, coordination, accountability, and transparency. Governance activities offer an institutional setting for the implementation of programs and are thus linked to the effectiveness of program delivery. Effective CBO program implementation is conceptualized as the mediator variable and is captured in terms of resource mobilization, participation of beneficiaries and project sustainability. Effective implementation ensures the delivery of services such as financial support, education and training, health services, and agricultural support, which lead to women’s economic empowerment. Women’s economic empowerment is evidence in terms of income, asset ownership, employment, financial inclusion, and participation in leadership roles.

Theoretical basis for conceptual framework is institutional theory and empowerment theory Institutional theory says that: organizations performance and outcome will depend on the regulations, rules and governances [15][14]. Local regulatory governance is the institution framework for CBO intervention which determines performance and sustainability. Empowerment theory holds the assumptions that individual’s empowerment is a product of opportunity, resource access and social network [12][13]. In the current research, the implementation effectiveness of the CBO program acts as the mechanism that relates the regulation governance to economic empowerment of women in terms of resource utilization, involvement of beneficiaries, and project sustainability.

Hypothetical Relationships

H1: Local regulatory governance is significantly associated with women’s economic empowerment.

H2: CBO program implementation effectiveness significantly mediates the relationship between local regulatory governance and women’s economic empowerment.

This part highlights empirical evidence on the extent to which local regulatory governance influences women’s economic empowerment through the effectiveness of implementation of CBO program in Montserrado County, Liberia. Respondents’ demographic characteristics; Descriptive statistics of the study variables; bivariate analysis on relationships between local regulatory governance, CBO program implementation effectiveness and women’s economic empowerment; and Multivariate analysis on relationships between the variables were outlined as follow.

Of the 384 women surveyed, 310 completed and returned their questionnaires, resulting in a response rate of 80.7 percent (Table 1).

The profile of the surveyed sample consisted of mostly an active labor force: mostly aged 35 - 44 years (38.7 percent), followed by 15 - 24 years (24.8 percent) and 25 - 34 years (21.7 percent). This structure of age seems representative of a labor force involved in productive economic activities where the regulatory governance of CBO financial, health, education and agricultural programs is a crucial aspect.

The marital status of women surveyed was somewhat balanced between

Table 1. Demographic characteristics of respondents.

married (35.8 percent) and single women (35.2 percent), meaning that the composition of the family household, to a large extent, has diverse arrangements, thus influencing women’s access to and control over economic resources within a CBO program. The educational backgrounds ranged from none (21.9 percent) to university education (20.6 percent), signifying a mix in human capital, hence potentially diverse knowledge on the nature and demands of the rules, compliances and service delivery processes that constitute regulated processes of the authorities managing these programs. Most respondents (57.1 percent) had been residents of Montserrado County for more than 10 years, hence suggesting consistent experience with CBO program interventions and regulations. The general economic background of the respondents was very poor. For example, majority of the respondents (48.4 percent) earned between LRD 50-500 per month, highlighting extreme vulnerability and heavy reliance on informal livelihood. In addition, majority of respondents were CBO members (76.1 percent).

Overall, the demographic profile is characteristic of a low-income security group and high interaction with CBO mechanisms, and thus the topic of regulatory governance in implementation becomes highly pertinent in explaining variation in women’s economic empowerment outcomes in Montserrado County.

This section provides the descriptive results of local regulatory oversight in community-based organization poverty alleviation programs. It includes the responses of the survey respondents about their understanding on the enforcement mechanisms of monitoring, compliance enforcement, coordination, accountability and transparency. The findings are presented using frequencies and percentages along with mean and standard deviations in order to demonstrate the central tendency of the distribution and variability of the responses across items. Table 2 shows moderate agreement between dimensions across regulatory oversight aspects.

Table 2. Descriptive statistics of local regulatory oversight variables.

Monitoring achieved the average value of 2.46 (SD = 1.33). This average value indicates that people tend to disagree on the effective practices of the mechanisms. The highest agreement for this dimension is 31.7% in item which indicated it is not easy to get proper monitoring from the organization’s supervision and control authority. Compliance enforcement achieved the average value of 2.37 (SD = 1.34). This average value indicates the lowest practice among the mechanisms. Coordination achieved the average value of 2.49 (SD = 1.31), with the highest agreement rate being 25%. Accountability achieved average value of 2.41 (SD = 1.33). The transparency obtained the highest value among the dimensions and achieved an average value of 2.52 (SD = 1.29). For most items, the means are less than 3.00 indicating a slight tendency towards disagreement of the respondents regarding the strength of regulatory monitoring. The range of standard deviations is from 1.29 - 1.34, indicating substantial variability in responses or inconsistency of perception of performance among the CBOs.

The section follows up the descriptive findings by analyzing the correlation between local regulatory governance (independent variable) and women’s economic empowerment (dependent variable) in Montserrado County, Liberia. The proxy variables for local regulatory governance are monitoring, compliance, enforcement, coordination, accountability and transparency, and those for women’s economic empowerment are income, assets, employment, financial access and political and organizational involvement. Pearson correlation analysis was used because the variables were constructed as continuous composite indices; this was to investigate the strength and direction of linear relationships.

Financial inclusion and income outcome seem to be related to the governance functions with strong relation. Accountability is strongly correlated with financial inclusion (r = 0.55, p < 0.001), followed by compliance enforcement (r = 0.49, p < 0.001). There also is a significant positive association between monitoring and financial inclusion (r = 0.47, p < 0.001). This suggests that financial inclusion and economic outcome correlate positively with governance functions that are relevant to inspection and enforcement, compared to other forms of empowerment, such as participation within leadership positions in CBOs. Income outcomes correlate positively with accountability (r = 0.53, p < 0.001) and compliance enforcement (r = 0.51, p < 0.001) (see Table 3).

Table 3. Correlation matrix between local regulatory governance and women’s economic empowerment.

***p < 0.001; **p < 0.01; *p < 0.05.

The weakest correlations seem to be for leadership participation: across governance function they ranged from r = 0.18 to r = 0.29 and showed weaker association with the outcome variable. It appears that the function of regulatory governance is associated with economic dimensions of empowerment (income, financial inclusion) rather than to the function of leadership position within the CBOs. Accountability and compliance enforcement functions are more strongly linked to economic outcome variables than other dimensions. Thus, it implies that it is the way in which the system governs access to resources that impacts on whether women gain access to financial institutions, more than whether or not women gain a leadership position in the CBOs.

The findings are supported by qualitative findings. For instance, one of the key respondents has this to say “Accountability for any program has a bearing on whether women will receive direct funding or not. When accounting and monitoring processes are more efficient, they will provide funding support for women on a stable and predictable basis” (KII, 01, Field data, 2025). Similarly, one of the officials commented that “Accountability helps women gain more. When rules are being enforced, women will be able to get access to loans and training without further delay” (KII, 12, Field data, 2025).

Following the bivariate relationships above, we performed multiple linear regression to analyze the link between local regulatory governance (independent variable) and economic empowerment of women (dependent variable). It was applied to estimate the relative effect of each aspect of governance while controlling for the effect of other predictor variables included in the model.

Table 4. Multiple linear regression results for local regulatory governance and women’s economic empowerment.

All governance dimensions at the local level of regulatory governance are positively associated with women’s economic empowerment. The accountability dimension (=0.28) and the compliance enforcement dimension (=0.25) are the strongest associations, while coordination has the weakest (=0.16) (see Table 4). This implies that the governance functions at the local level of regulatory governance which are closely related to enforcement is more closely associated with empowerment outcomes. A key informant explained the relationship as such: “When the accountability functions are put in place it implies that the project money gets into appropriate activity and income generating activity of women get stabilized.” (KII 015, Field Data, 2025). In summary, the implication here is that improved women’s economic empowerment outcome in Montserrado County is more associated with increased accountability and enforcement systems within local regulatory governance.

This study further employed regression based step-wise method to check whether program implementation effectiveness explains part of the effect of local regulatory governance on the economic empowerment of women, by checking whether inclusion of mediating variable weakens the relation between regulatory governance and economic empowerment of women. Variables that reflect the extent of implementation effectiveness were measured by the extent of resource utilization, involvement of beneficiaries and sustainability of the project, whereas mediation was checked by comparing the regression outcome before and after including mediating variable in the model. Results of this study are given in Table 5.

Table 5. Regression-based stepwise mediation analysis of CBO program implementation effectiveness between local regulatory governance and women’s economic empowerment.

The analysis revealed that the relationship between local regulatory governance and women’s economic empowerment decreases by 0.13 (from 0.51 to 0.38) when CBO program implementation effectiveness is added. This implies that governance structures’ relationship to empowerment outcomes can be partly explained by processes of program implementation. Regulatory governance has the strongest relation to program implementation effectiveness (0.56, p < 0.001), followed by the relation between program implementation effectiveness and women’s economic empowerment (0.53, p < 0.001).

Based on one of beneficiary respondent’s words:

“If CBO’s rule following and reporting is good then we will get timely trainings, supports and our small business grow” (KII, 12, Field data, 2025).

The word from another key informant:

“Effective regulation would foster better implementation discipline which is reflected in access to services and opportunities to women” (KII, 05, Field data, 2025).