Winston Churchill is credited with various versions of the phrase that the main values for which the enemy is being fought are not at the front. That is, all heroic actions in war have the ultimate goal of protecting the rights and freedoms of citizens, preserving or improving welfare in the country. And that is why internal transformations in the country are no less important than victory in the war. They are the main meaning and the main goal of all exploits at the front.
That is why the experts of the NGO “Volunteer Initiative “Kharkov Station” as part of the project “Promotion of Participatory Governance in the East of Ukraine”, financed by the “National Endowment for Democracy”, conducted an assessment of the spread of participatory democracy tools in the administrative centers of the districts of Eastern Ukraine. The assessment was carried out in May-July 2022. At the same time, only those territorial communities that were not under temporary occupation and were not located directly in the combat zone were evaluated.
The conducted assessment made it possible to establish the following results:
- In the district centers of the eastern regions of Ukraine, absolutely all procedures of participatory democracy, the obligation of which is stipulated by the legislation of Ukraine, have been implemented. But in different communities, these tools of participatory democracy are spread to varying degrees. Unfortunately, there are no participation procedures that have been implemented in all evaluated communities. But there are no tools that have not been implemented in most communities. This means that participatory democracy is a phenomenon quite familiar to Ukrainian officials.
- The most common tools of participatory democracy are public hearings, electronic petitions and local initiatives. These procedures involve not just informing the community, but different degrees of participation of citizens in making management decisions in local self-government bodies. However, these tools are not implemented in all evaluated communities.
- The least common tools of participatory democracy are posting on the official website of the city council the results of the roll-call votes of deputies and the public information request form. In exactly 1/3 of the assessed communities, residents are actually deprived of these tools of participatory democracy. This indicates that even the preservation of the status of administrative centers of the district in 2020 did not contribute to the informational openness of the local self-government bodies of the territorial communities of Eastern Ukraine to a sufficient extent.
Of all the assessed district centers of Eastern Ukraine, all the requirements of Ukrainian legislation regarding the mandatory presence of participatory democracy procedures were met only in Myrhorod, Romny and Kharkiv. In almost exactly 2/3 of communities, almost all requirements have been met. The worst situation regarding participatory democracy is observed in Shostka – this city lacks almost all of the legally required tools of participatory democracy.
In general, the evaluation allows us to state that the technologies of participatory democracy are not something foreign and unfamiliar in the territorial communities of the district centers of Eastern Ukraine. Most of the tools of participatory democracy have been implemented to a sufficiently large extent in all evaluated territorial communities. However, those procedures that ensure the transparency and openness of the functioning of local councils are insufficiently widespread, which indicates a certain informational closedness of local self-government bodies in the east of Ukraine.