An Attempt to Classify Other Techniques

It must be admitted that local elections and referenda, as techniques for finding out local policy preferences, are the most important in terms of their impact on self-government functioning, but they should still be viewed as extraordinary techniques. Using them alone the real and active participation of citizens in the life of community.

The palette of techniques for citizen participation is much richer. The above-mentioned research among mayors gives an account of most important sources from which the mayor finds out about public opinion. Results rank as follows (with respect to frequency of choosing the one source as most important):

• personal contacts with individual citizens (56.9%);

• public meetings of citizens (18.1%);

• town (community) authority, i.e. from officials (8.3%);

• visiting hours at town halls (8.2%);

• family, relatives, and friends (5.6%);

• representatives of organizations (1.0%);

• information in local media (0.8%);

• my working place (0.8%; in the case of re-elected mayors), and,

• citizens’ letters (0.4%).

Individual weights of sources mentioned above differ significantly. Though that list of sources is rather comprehensive, other procedures should be added. To understand various techniques of finding out about public preferences in local policies, including ways to apply their results, we tried here to arrange them in a sort of classification. This way, it will be possible to find certain indicators of their use and effectiveness during the past years in the Czech Republic. The list of these techniques arose from the analysis of available sources and in this way it mirrors real-life problems. (This is presented in the appendix.)

Another reason we introduced the list of techniques for finding out about public preferences in local policy, was to stress the following:

• These techniques are quite diverse, and without understanding them it is not possible to analyze their effectiveness.

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• To understand these techniques well, a comprehensive survey should be carried out. Data currently available cannot provide systematic information about any one of them.

• This sort of list could help to create certain means of measurements for analysis of communication between citizens and the council.

3.2.3 “Communicating Town”

An original approach, which serves both to research in and development of two-way communication between municipal councils and citizens, was worked out by Vera and Miroslav Foret, Brno [24]. This method has been implemented both in the Czech and Slovak Republics.

Since 1994, the project “Communicating Town” has been underway in the Czech Republic.

Since 1995, the project has received financial support from the Open Society Fund in Prague.¹¹ The main goal of the “Communicating Town” project is to improve democratic functioning of public administration, to help in building civic society by strengthening positive relations between the authority and the public, and to make the public administration learn how to create room for citizen participation in decision making about both concrete problems and long-term concepts of town development, including support of business and solving of unemployment.

In cooperation with the Faculty of Economics (IROMAR) of Matej Bela University in Banská Bystrica, the “Communicating Town” project has been in the Slovak Republic since 1996. Towns attached to the project can be divided into three size categories:

• small towns with about 1 000 inhabitants were represented by Boretice, Dacice, Lázne Bohdanec, Lostice, Mikulov (and in Slovakia: Kremnica and Nová Bana);

• medium towns with a population of less than 10 000 were Brno—Královo Pole, Brno—

Slatina, Breclav, Cesky´ Krumlov, Havlíckuv Brod, Klatovy, Rokycany, Sternberk, Svitavy, Koprivnice, Trebíc, Frenstát pod Radhostem, Kutná Hora, Uherské Hradiste (and in Slovakia: Kosice—Tahanovce, Pezinok, and Trencín);

• big towns with up to 100 000 inhabitants were Brno, Hradec Králové, Liberec, Plzen´, Ostrava, Olomouc, Zlín (and in Slovakia: Banská Bystrica and Presov).

The “Communicating Town” project confirmed great differences between small and big towns with respect to communication and relations of citizens, state administration, and self-government.

In bigger towns, the communication of town halls with citizens is more complex, more demanding

—and worse. Another element of differentiation is level of education, which gives people greater ability to find their bearings in the society. People with higher education are more active, more satisfied and they are more easily oriented in mechanisms of state administration and self-government.

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If it is our matter of concern to give a certain piece of information to its addressee, our success depends heavily on our knowledge of the addressee and on proper selection of communication strategy, communication channels, and means of feedback verification. The point in question is that in addition to unilateral legislative measures, there should be a system helping communication between town hall and citizens. Legislative rules coordinate our lives. But if we are not able to make clear why these restrictions are necessary, what benefits and social values they bring, and what are the impacts of their breaching, citizens may perceive them only as cosmetic and largely artificial.

Among the project’s findings, citizens think press to be the most appropriate means of information.

That is why most town halls issue their own newsletters. But a sole town hall newsletter is no solution to problems of public information. His is essentially a more complex problem linked to an image of Municipal Authority and its culture of behavior.

The complexity of the problem can be exemplified in the case of the district capital of Svitavy.

The town hall made everything possible to inform citizens about housing problems. Two issues of the local newspaper were devoted to information on the plans and intentions of the local authorities in house and flat construction.

The newsletters were sent free of charge to all households. But in a survey on a representative sample of citizens, only 30% of them gave a positive answer to the question “Are you sufficiently informed about town plans in the area of housing development?”. This implies that the responsibility of the town hall does not end with publication of informational material. An organized campaign is needed to ensure that all citizens grasp the usefulness of reading the material. (It is also necessary to help those who we can suppose would probably not understand much of the material.)

Within the project, town halls and public were informed about the possibilities of the TELE-CITIES program, about Internet use and other technical matters that make communication easier. At the survey held in Trebíc, the municipality authority was interested in asking citizens whether they have a computer at their disposal at home. Computers of any sort were owned by only 20% of respondents.

The project also showed, that the strategic plan of development or the long-term concept is very often confused with the territorial plan. If the town hall, in cooperation with experts and town inhabitants, does not succeed in creating a vision and strategy and gain its approval by the council, the same unsolvable situations repeat themselves time and time again, and the officials hardly find it possible to explain decisions to citizens. Many citizens feel the present coordinating and development activities to be nuisances, and not any part of a gradual process of improving a matter of common interest. This explains the low level of interest in budget and little knowledge about it implying their mistrust of town-hall management.

As the most eminent problem, mutual communication among particular town hall sections deserves special attention. For this purpose, a methodology of analysis of inner authority culture was developed and tested in 1997. Using a questionnaire form, it helps to disclose what obstacles exist to hamper this section’s inclusion into the municipal authority.