| title: | Local Government Institutions and Citizen Participation: Influence Channels and Forms |
|---|---|
| reg no: | ETF6878 |
| project type: | Estonian Science Foundation research grant |
| subject: |
5.7. Political Sciences |
| status: | accepted |
| institution: | Tallinna Ülikool |
| head of project: | Georg Sootla |
| duration: | 01.01.2006 - 31.12.2007 |
| description: | Local governments are not widely exploited as a research problem in Estonian political science and public policy literature. Therefore, the decision-making and reforms are in practice based on causal interpretations and impressions drawn from international experiences. In the context of the desired administrative reform the problems related to local democracy and public participation will turn to be essential. Estonian researchers haven’t paid sufficiently attention to these problems yet. The aims of the research will be: 1. The role division and power configurations between local authority council, officials and citizens in the context of policy-making. 2. How are these configurations creating channels for the civil society to influence decision-making on local level and what are the main forms of civil participation. 3. How different patterns of civic participations affect legitimacy of the local government among citizens. The central hypothesis of the research is that in more institutionalized local governments (with strong parties, factions and coalitions) and in local governments the where roles of council and government are clearly defined, the relations between citizens and local government are functioning more effectively than in the local governments where the dominant mode in citizens-government relations is more based on direct democracy. The research project is based on the survey planned to conduct in autumn 2006 by the researchers. Three different groups will be included to the survey: councilors (sample 350), officials of the local governments (400), active citizens and leaders of the local civic organizations (450). Altogether 1200 persons will be interviewed. Master students of Department of Government will conduct these interviews. Students will conduct the interviews in the context of the course: “Research methods in political science”. The survey method will be structured face-to-face interviews. Postgraduate students are also participating in the second, analytical phase of the project. Experts from University of Tampere and Toqueville Center of Local Democracy (Budapest) will consult the project, mainly in the phase of analysis. Researches intend to write at least two academic articles and publish a monograph in Estonian basing on the research results. The above-mentioned monograph would offer new and valuable information for officials of local governments, researchers, but especially for decision makers and reformers in central government. Currently, there is little literature about local governments in Estonian, so the monograph would promote better understanding of local governments and their problems in Estonia. |
| project group | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| no | name | institution | position | |
| 1. | Leif Kalev | |||
| 2. | Tõnis Saarts | |||
| 3. | Georg Sootla | Tallinna Ülikool | ||