Citizen Participation and Engagement in Urban Governance: Perception of Finnish and Polish Local Officials
Abstrakt
Participation has recently received renewed attention in the context of governance. T is is especially relevant in countries where democratization and decentralization have led to an increased promotion of citizen involvement into the decision-making process.
T is article suggests that the current debate on civic engagement would benef t from further ref ection on how the concept of participation is implemented in contexts, particularly in the Nordic as well as Central and Eastern European countries, where ideas of local democracy, urban governance and involvement can be understood dif erently. By exploring citizen participation from the perspective of local of cials in two European cities - Lublin, Poland and Tampere, Finland, the article seeks to add signif cant data to the on-going scholarly discussion.
Based on qualitative research, it examines advantages and disadvantages of the provisions of the local citizen-participation frameworks, as perceived by the of cials of the selected case cities. In the conclusion, the authors point out that although both cities have dif erent democratic institutional systems as well as commonly accepted notions of citizen participation, their city halls frequently face similar problems related to the use of participatory tools.