Valitsusasutuse ja tema sidusrühmade vahelise kommunikatsiooni roll seadusloomeprotsessis legitiimsuse saavutamiseks

Date

2007

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Tartu Ülikool
Eesti. Sotsiaalministeerium
Eesti
õigusloome
legitiimsus
valitsusasutused
kommunikatsioon
poliitiline kommunikatsioon
magistritööd

Abstract

Description

The master thesis handled the communication of a government institution and its stakeholders in the legislation process in order to gain legitimacy. The topic is important in Estonia at the moment because there is a general opinion that civil servants do not listen to people’s opinions and take decisions as they wish. The task of this practical master thesis is to take two cases of draft laws of the Ministry of Social Affairs and to analyse the communication of the government institution and its stakeholders in the legislation process, discover problems in practice and find solutions. The principles in the communication analysis were the two-way symmetrical communication and the organisation’s internal and external unity. Stakeholders of the Ministry of Social Affairs are very much interested in the ministry’s information and the participation in the legislation process. By stakeholders opinions, the availability of the information on the ministry’s draft laws is good. The most popular information channel is the Internet, the direct communication with civil servants is also far-spread. One of the least popular information channel is the Public Relation Departement. One of the reasons might be that the department is not involved in the legislation process before the first version of the draft is ready. So it means that they don’t have as much information as the civil servants in the main subject departments. Therefore there are two suggestions. First, in order to coordinate better the process in the ministry and to prevent communication problems with stakeholders, the Public Relations Department should be involved in the legislation process from the very beginning. Second, the civil servants’ direct communication with stakeholders takes a lot of time and is not efficient. If the Internet possibilities would be used in cooperation with the Public Relations Department, then it would solve problems of the communication need of stakeholders and the time consumption of civil servants. The influentiality of stakeholders was analysed with the theory of stakeholders and when analysing Freeman’s map of stakeholders, it was found that some important stakeholders are not on the map. If stakeholders are not involved in the legislation process in the early stage then communication problems might appear later. Stakeholders can either put obstacles in reaching goals or help to gain the targets of the government institution. The satisfaction with the draft law and with the cooperation are important factors that influence gaining the legitimacy. It can be said on the basis of the results of the formalised questionnaire that generally stakeholders evaluate good the cooperation with the Ministry of Social Affairs. When comparing the satisfaction with two draft laws then stakeholders of labour affairs are more satisfied with the law than people in the social affairs. One of the reasons can be stakeholders’ different expectations comparing to the Ministry of Social Affairs. When stakeholders’ expectations and ministry’s plans of creating new services in the labour field generally matched, then interests of counterparts in the social field were different. There were several meetings and seminars for stakeholders in the preparation period of two draft laws. Civil servants of the labour and social affairs have long communication experience with stakeholders but the involvement of stakeholders in the social affairs seemed more regular. The decision process and negotiations seemed open to both fields of stakeholders and they had a chance to make proposals. However, all stakeholders didn’t get feedback regarding their proposals. The ministry should develop the dialog with stakeholders. Gathering opinions and proposals, learning from it and giving feedback to stakeholders about their proposals are important components in the two-way symmetrical communication. It also seemed problematic that civil servants had negotiations from the power position. It was possible to make proposals but generally the ministry already had a plan how to manage and implement changes in the beginning of negotiations. It decreased the openness of civil servants to new ideas and inhibited a dialog between counterparts. On relying the handled theories of the master thesis, it can be stated that factors influencing the legitimacy of draft laws are the satisfaction of stakeholders, the characteristic of communication, public expectations, the communication stategy and the decision process of the ministry and the policy style. When taking account the results and conclusions, it can be said that the pattern of research results are similar and therefore the problems are structurally similar in the Ministry of Social Affairs. The ministry should consider solving the structural problems because otherwise gaining the legitimacy can be inhibited.

Keywords

H Social Sciences (General)

Citation