4 September 2010 Saturday      Articles     PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCHES AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS - - - - - - - - The statistical researches in political arena have started to take place among the indispensable information sources of modern democracies. As a consequence, both the political parties and central and local executive council and institutions have the opportunity to determine their public support, strategies of election campaigns, political tendency of the voters, their socio-economical structures by the statistical public opinion researches, and furthermore, take advantage of mathematical and statistical methods on the matters such as citizen satisfaction, corporate structuring, requirement analysis, strategic planning, success assessment and performance measurement. The determination of the requirements or requests of the citizens and society and conveyance of the same to the governing body and their contribution to the institutionalization of the administrative organs connected to the democratic administrations and to their functioning in an effective manner come forward as an undeniable reality. It is not possible at the contemporary democratic regimes for political and administrative structures that lag behind the expectations of the society and cannot catch the transition changes to produce rational policies and meet the requirements of the voters and society. The indication of permanent change of the requirements and demands at the dynamic societies is a phenomenon that should be taken into consideration. The politicians and administrators find the opportunity to obtain the preferences of the voters and citizens through the statistical researches and data pertaining to the factors explaining these preferences. It is possible to measure how meaningful the statistical researches are by the degree of reference due to be given by the political and administrative structures to the research results at the decision-making processes. The organizations that assign an effective function to the statistical researches at the decision-making processes reach the high-level of accuracy to the target or objective they want to reach and achieve. To make a decision means the selection of one or more of the alternatives, if available. All individuals generally and especially decision-makers, who take up political and legal liability, make their decisions, when they have to on a matter, by the data in hand and apply the same. In case of unavailability of different alternatives or existence of a sole alternative, there should be no need to make any research. This is because the mentioned single alternative is sufficient for the decision to be made. However, if the decision-making and application will be carried out over a multivariate complex subject where more than one alternative is available, it may be necessary for the decision-makers to conduct the decision-making processes based on the mathematical and statistical researches. The local governments may require researches on permanent basis to raise the standard of the service, offered to the public, ensure the most effective utilization of the sources in hand and increase the level of satisfaction of those receiving services.  It is a clear fact how important to determine the service priorities for the local governments according to the preferences of citizens, realization of services and investments according to these priorities within a specific framework of a plan and program through a medium- and long-term view  and ensuring the application of the decisions so made in an effective manner. It is evident that the urban problems show increases from day to day and necessary to use the sources of local governments in a more effective manner. The utilization of the limited public sources in a more productive way requires an effective method. It is inevitable to look at the local governing policies from an extensive perspective and prepare the same in consideration of long terms. At this point, it is requisite for the municipal administrators, mainly mayors, to assign importance to the researches based on scientific methods. In this context, the local governors bearing visionary capacity should determine the strong and weak aspects of their administrations according to the scientific methods in order to exhibit a successful and effective management and administration. The administrative bodies that are developed permanently and problems of which are varied from day to day will always require statistical researches in order to carry the success graphs upward. From this point of view, the data that are acquired by scientific methods and policies, created by taking them into consideration, will be the source of putting the modern administration principles into practice and of success.     Denge Araştırma Ltd. Şti. 2008 All rights are reserved.