Influence of European norms of participatory democracy on increasing the level of Ukrainian citizens participation in local government

Abstract

The article considers the European legal acts features concerning democratic practices of participatory democracy for their further implementation in Ukraine. Given the insufficient level of public participation in the development and adoption of public administration decisions at the local level in Ukraine, the attention is focused on some elements of the participatory mechanism of involving members of local communities in local self-government in European documents on exercising the right to local self-government.The analysis of European norms on municipal participation, which testified to their evolution under the influence of building a system of democratic public administration and an active civil society, is made. The result of this process is the creation of a modern integrated system of interaction and cooperation of local authorities with local communities through the tools of the concept of transparent municipal activities. The comparison of the content of European acts on citizen participation in local public life, adopted over the years, allows concluding that the latest documents, along with a summary of considerable principles, forms and methods of participatory democracy contained in previous acts, are also supplemented by modern principles and measures of their implementation; and the updated methods can be used more effectively using forms of participatory democratic participation at different stages of the complicity.It is determined that modern European tendencies of democratization of administrative processes and encouragement of citizens' participation in local public life influence the increasing the citizens' participation level in making decisions of local value issues in Ukraine. It is suggested to distinguish three consecutive levels of citizen participation in making public administration decisions of local importance depending on the type of relationship, the degree of the local community members’ participation and the intensity of the process (low – general information, medium – public consultation, high – partner dialogue), the regulation of forms on each of them and the relevant content.