SEARCHING FOR OPPORTUNITIES FOR MORE ACTIVE CIVIL PARTICIPATION IN DECISION-MAKING PROCESSES

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to introduce two items:1) the Civil participation Tool developed by the Council of Europe’s Centre of Expertise for Good Governance, for the purposes of selecting, evaluating and classifying civil actors into groups and selecting the most appropriate forms of participation in decision-making processes as well as providing accurate information for classified stakeholders and develop the most appropriate strategies to activate the processes of participation for different stakeholders, based on the assessment of their potential to engage, and to enhance the level of participation; 2) the results of educational pilot projects implemented in Lithuania in 2020. The results of the educational pilot projects confirmed the scientific hypothesis raised by the authors of this article that more active civil participation in decision-making processes can be expected while recognizing the objective differences of the local stakeholders and according to that, provide different forms of information, as well as different strategies for improving their skills and increasing their engagement in participating in decision-making processes.