Involvement of citizens in decision-making at the local level

28.02.2023

The launch conference of the report was held with the topic: “Involvement of citizens in decision-making at the local level”, where the findings regarding the level of satisfaction of citizens with the services received by municipal officials, as well as the contacts with their municipalities, were presented.

Rezarta Krasniqi, the executive director of the D4D Institute, has shown that over 1,000 residents were asked in this report, where according to her, the findings show that the level of citizen involvement in decision-making at the municipal level is not satisfactory, since about 2/3 of the respondents stated that they are not involved in any way. She also announced that, the findings of the public opinion research show a low level of satisfaction of citizens with the services received by municipal officials, as well as low contact with their municipality.

From the findings of the report, Krasniqi, has also shown that, the satisfaction of the citizens with the services received from the municipal officials, is that 44.2 percent of the respondents were satisfied or very satisfied with the services they received from the municipal officials. While 17.3 percent of respondents at the country level declared themselves dissatisfied and very dissatisfied. From the gender analysis of the results, we notice that there are no big differences in the responses regarding satisfaction with the services they have received from municipal officials.

Meanwhile, Allen Meta, the Project Manager at the D4D Institute, has shown that from the results, it can be seen that the participation of citizens in municipal decision-making is not satisfactory and is quite low. Meta has expressed that the participation of citizens is important. From the results, it has been seen that the participation of citizens is not satisfactory. In that country, where the citizens do not participate, that democracy is not complete. Hesitation and distrust, on the part of the citizens, is what we have observed from this analysis. From the public hearings that citizens have participated in, their requests have not been considered, and therefore they have lost confidence and are reluctant to participate in public hearings.

Meta also announced, that the satisfaction of citizens with the services received by municipal officials, is that 5.7 percent of them were very satisfied, 38.5 percent were satisfied, 37.6 percent had no contact for the last 6 months. Involvement of citizens in municipal decision-making, citizens answered that they were involved 33.4 percent, not involved 38.5 percent, and so on. From these findings, it was found that the evaluation of citizens’ participation in public hearings in the last six months is that, 68.4 percent of citizens were never aware of the public hearings, and what is concerning, is that 27.1 percent of citizens have never participated despite being aware of public hearings.

This activity is supported by the program of the Kosovo Civil Society Foundation (KCSF) ‘Come to Kosovo’, co-financed by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), Sweden and the Government of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.