Communication between the community and local government – Case the Municipality of Pristina

Abstract

In recent years, the development of local government in the most developed countries has been oriented toward creating a new kind of partnership with the community, giving to the community an important role in policymaking and decision-making, something that is recommended by the European Charter of Local Government. Communication between the local government and the community through different communication channels/means, also in Kosovo, is an important alert or signal that the community to become an important part of public policies, although the participation of the communities in public meetings is still low, and the data derived from relevant local and international studies, also this study as well proves that the participation of the communities in drafting and developing the policies is very low. By seeing the role and importance of communication in the dialogue, cooperation, promotion and empowerment of an active community in local decision making, the goal and aim of this paper is to analyze the forms/ways of communication between the community and local government in the Pristina region, respectively in 5 municipalities: Pristina, Fushë Kosovë, Obiliq, Gllogoc dhe Gracanica, then the sources of information through which ones the community is being informed about various public meetings, also another aim is to make comparisons between the above-mentioned municipalities regarding the use of local mechanisms in decision-making.

The methodology used in this paper has focused on the analysis of various studies and reports on local government and community, as well as on quantitative research to measure community opinion in the municipalities of the Pristina region. The overall results of this paper emphasize that the community is mainly informed by the local government through social networks, the municipality's website, local TV, the announcement board in municipalities, and other sources. Whereas, the local decision-making mechanisms used so far by the community are: petitions, civic initiatives, consultative committees, public meetings, but no initiatives to remove/step out mayors, although in principle some communities in some municipalities are not satisfied with their work.