Reality of Participation in Decision-Making Process in Georgia: Challenges of Drafting Effective Policy

Abstract

               Public policy presents a way to solve the current problem in the society. Tbilisi belongs to the number of capitals where the population has increased dramatically in the last decade. Along with the population growth, a number of urban problems appeared or worsened. The law on the protection of homeless animals in the state is ineffective and useless. Animal abandonment and violence against them increased. Unregistered animals and their uncontrolled breed make the problem more complicated. Some dogs are aggressive and need to be treated. Animal protection services and dog shelters are small and cannot solve such an urgent problem. There are completelely different opinions about the issue in the society, which further complicates the problem. Several dominant stakeholders appeared around the issue, although thay have to be in unequal condition during civil advocacy process. We are interested in answering the question: under what conditions we can get effective  policy for solving the problem? Our hypothesis is that equal involvement of stakeholders will increase the possibility of formulation effective policy. During research we used  Kingdon’s  stream model according to which three independent stream pass through the window of opportunity to solve the problem. We use a qualitative research method, namely, focus group to analyze the stakeholders positions.