IMPLEMENTING OPEN GOVERNMENT POLICIES ON SUBNATIONAL LEVELS

Abstract

The main research question in this paper refers to top-down Europeanization of subnational government levels, in the context of implementing the open government policies. In the last few decades, democratic deficit and growing passivization of citizens in political life keep denoting the European countries. Therefore, it seemed important to explore all options for increasing democratic legitimacy of the public authorities’ actions and decisions. This paper is focused on citizens’ participation in public life on subnational levels considering the fact they meet the most of their needs on local level. The method of legal analysis, linguistic and teleological method are used to analyze European Union and Council of Europe legal documents, all in order to identify principles and standards proclaiming open government on European states’ subnational levels. The research has shown seven different principles, which can be classified as the primary (participation, partnership, antidiscrimination, transparency and accountability) and the secondary ones (inclusiveness and sustainability). They are systemized and elaborated in the first part of the paper. In the second part, some specific aspects of open government policies are discussed, e.g. level of trust in local authorities and their activities on European level, cooperation between local authorities and non-governmental organisations, and important aspects of responsible citizenship. In the last chapter, implementation of open government policies will be analysed on the case of Croatia.