Intercultural Communications and Community Participation in Local Governance: EU Experience

This article deals with the identification of the most effective mechanisms, methods and tools for local governance in the EU through a high-level community participation in these processes in the context of building existing systems of intercultural communication. The essence and substance of intercultural communication is revealed with the help of well-known research methods, as well as the logical structure and systemic analysis. The main interdependencies in their implementation on the community structure are determined. The issue of determining the place of local governments in the system of intercultural communications at the territorial community level occupies an important place in the study. The main features of intercultural communication and their impact on community participation in local governance are revealed. An important conclusion is drawn that public demand is the main product of intercultural communication, while social capital is the main result. The relationship between the breadth of community coverage by intercultural communication processes and the depth of community participation in local governance processes is studied. This inclusiveness allows determining the civil society development level, the activity of its institutions, as well as the extent at which the goal of implementing good governance concept in a particular community is achieved. The intercultural communication is proved to be able to form a public demand system that the community presents to local self-government bodies as programme requirements for the state of territorial development. All this determines the further need to study social capital as an independent resource and additional potential that the community can offer through the network of social communications to local self-government bodies to improve the effectiveness of territorial development.