Evaluation of participation culture in local service presentation in terms of local democracy: A comparative analysis on Balıkesir and Eskişehir

With 2000s in Turkey, versatile and administrative restructuring works have been started for traditional public administration approach and practices. These works have made notions such as governance, efficiency, transparency, accountability and participation as dominant principles of the administrative system. This has changed the nature of the relationship between the public service beneficiary and the service provider. With this case was passed to a period that predicting for both the public and practitioners to actively participate in the process of making administrative decisions and policy-making. In this period, new administrative participation mechanisms were developed, and local governments, as the closest units to the public, formed the first step in which these mechanisms were put into practice. Furthermore, both the fact that it is a prominent concept at the new administrative perceptions in a theoretical level and its implementation through new administrative tools and methods in practical level is the indication of the day by day increasing importance and legitimacy of the administrative participation. The attitude of administrative participation, which is based on cooperation and supports the interaction and communication between the citizen and the administration, becomes meaningful only by the adoption of participation by the broader groups into a culture. The concept of participation culture, which comes to life in the cultural accumulation towards participation of the citizens, is reached by acting from the social, political and administrative (bureaucratic-organizational) dimensions of culture. The aim of the study is to carry out a theoretical and practical analysis of the notions of participation culture and administrative participation, as planned in the studies of administrative reform and based on the assumption that democratic participation is the fundamental value for the local governments. In order for a better analysis of the current situations of these notions, it is seemed appropriate to make a public survey which is one of the methods of the field research. In this context, the development of participation culture at the local level is comparatively analyzed by preferring Eskişehir, one of the richest provinces in terms of local government tradition in Turkey, and Balıkesir which gained the status of Metropolitan Municipality with the law numbered 6360. In the research, two distinct surveys were carried out with the citizens residing in centers of these cities and workers of the Eskişehir and Balıkesir Metropolitan Municipalities. In this regard, the dimensions of the participation culture are revealed by reflecting the perspectives of both service providers and beneficiaries. In parallel with the increasing demand for new participation mechanisms in the social and managerial context for the purpose of local democracy, the study is expected to contribute to the need for the studies conducted in this direction. Keywords: Participation, Administrative Participation, Participation Culture, Local Government.