Public Participation in the Decisional Process in Bucharest

Abstract

The public participation process represents the foundation for the development of a sustainable democratic society. This research paper focuses on the relation between the citizens and public authority throughout cooperation. The concept of public participation is understood here as the interaction between different kinds of actors, through available communication channels, in order to identify needs, opinions and beliefs with the purpose of adopting and implementing them in the form of public policies and decisions. This research paper highlights a communication rupture between the public administration and the citizens in Bucharest. Given the context provided by the COVID-19 pandemic, this research paper highlights the need to modernize the public administration in order to better communicate with the population. Some of the possible causes for the miscommunication, that appeared repeatedly throughout the survey, were the disappointment of the population with the public authority, lack of civic education or difficult procedures for public participation. Some of the possible solutions mentioned by the respondents are digitalization of the process of public participation, implementation of the proposals that come from the population, better informing the citizens with respect to the projects that are to be implemented in the community and online anonymous surveys. The survey technique used in order to obtain these data was the online survey, a questionnaire applied to the population of Bucharest, from all the 6 sectors of the Capital.