The Impact of Transparency on the Citizen Participation in Decision- Making at the Municipal Level in Romania

Abstract

The article analyses the implementation of the transparency law and investigates whether its adoption generated more citizens’ participation in the decision making process at municipal level in Romania. The research consisted of an analysis of the transparency reports that municipal authorities need to compile every year. We analysed the reports compiled by 28 cities and 5 sectors of the Bucharest municipality for the years 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017. Additional information about the challenges of the implementation of the law was collected from previous studies conducted by nongovernmental organizations on this topic. The research showed that public institutions increased the transparency of the decision making process by disclosing draft normative proposals and the documents the proposals were based on. The level of citizens’ participation in the consultation and deliberation stages of the decision making process remained low over the period analysed, even though a small increase could be observed. The number of recommendations received on draft normative acts was low. The research showed that citizens’ suggestions had higher chances to be included in final decisions if they were voiced during Local Council meetings. Besides providing empirical insights in the implementation of the transparency law in Romania, the article provides the researchers with evidence that increased decisional transparency does not automatically lead to greater citizens’ involvement in the decision making process.

The Financial Aspect of Non_Governmental Organizations:

“…Their role is observed in public diplomacy, resulting in successful positioning of the country through the activity of public actors, like NGOs. They become "agents of influence" instead of "agents of loyalty" (Bokeriya, 2014;Radu, 2019).…”

The Principle of Transparency in the Ukrainian Decentralisation Reform

“…However, even if ATC heads took transparency seriously and made some respective efforts, it is uncertain whether this alone would suffice for the desired result -a deeper involvement of the community into budgetary decision making. The recent evidence from Romania suggests that even if decisional transparency were increased at the local level, it would not automatically lead to greater citizens' involvement in the decision making process (Radu, 2019). The same is true for Ukraine: the Ukrainian students emphasized that despite slowly growing transparency most ATC community members feel excluded from the budget decision making; this leads to disappointment concerning the ongoing decentralization process (Малиняк, 2019).…”

Untitled

“…Numerous positive effects of PB mechanisms have been identified, such as information sharing, oversight, accountability, knowledge, and the creation of policy networks, to increased efficiency of the spending of funds, faster economic growth, more balanced development of urban and rural municipalities, reducing social disparities, better management, and identification of infrastructure, increased confidence in democratic processes, increased activation of the population, etc. (Touchton and Wampler, 2014;Mathebula, 2015;Radu, 2019). Some of those can be confirmed also for Slovenia, such as increased activation of the population, and better identification of (social) public infrastructure.…”