Citizen participation is part of the USAID project of reform of local self-government units, which has been supporting the reform of that sector in Croatia for a number of years.
The last sub-project covered the municipalities of Donji Kukuruzari, Dvor, Hrvatska Dubica, Jasenovac, Majur, Sunja and Topusko. Similar problems were detected in all those municipalities, including poor communication between the authorities and citizens, lack of knowledge about the role of self-government units, lack of information about their work and lack of transparency of local budgets.
In order to overcome those problems, local officials and foreign partners introduced a number of activities to inform citizens about the work of local authorities and to include them in the decision-making process. For example, all covered municipalities opened the sessions of their councils to the public, put up information boards to inform citizens about adopted decisions or upcoming sessions, and started releasing bulletins and leaflets.
The head of the project, Maris Mikelsons, said that citizen participation in the work of local authorities was one of the most important criteria of democracy.
The results show that when local authorities open up to citizens, citizens show more interest in the problems of their community and want to take part in solving them, a deputy head of the project, Krzysztof Chmura, said.
USAID has been working on the reform of local self-government units in Croatia for five years and its projects have covered more than 180 towns and municipalities.