He worked as a policy researcher in areas of economic policies, youth politics, the rule of law, and local communities. The main areas of her work include monitoring the judiciary, prosecution, and rule of law reforms in Montenegro. She is additionally engaged in questions of citizenship, local communities, and electoral reforms. Montenegro has been experiencing a crisis in democracy for several years now. We argue that through the development of local communities and their civil input from below, through giving them space, both physically and legislatively, for local communities to develop as separate governing bodies in relation to local governments, state governments, and the National Assembly, Montenegro can help accelerate the reforms that are necessary for the country to become a part of the EU, improve the socio-economic position of vulnerable groups in multiple parts of the state, and decrease social and political inequality among different individuals and groups.
The democratic potential that lies in local communities, as legally defined governing bodies, needs to be utilised in order to address the ongoing crisis of democratic governing in Montenegro and help the country accelerate key reforms in the EU accession process.
An unstable relationship between two assemblies and two governments in the past three years, after the fall of a year-long regime led by the Democratic Party of Socialists DPS regime, has shaped and continues to shape the political situation in Montenegro. The government currently in power is the so-called government with a technical mandate [3] and in the last year, several controversial decisions by the National Assembly regarding the Judiciary and Prosecution reforms [4] are still ongoing as of the moment of writing.
Their outcome, though, could potentially be another short-lived government, without support or political will for reforms from the Parliament as well as its constituting actors. Thus, coming back to the issue of democracy from below in Montenegro means taking a different point of view on the political system in Montenegro and, from a different angle, arguing for a higher degree of decentralisation, dispersion of power, and alternate mechanisms of active citizen participation.
Local communities [5] LCs are a primary and fundamental community for solving local issues. During March, the non-governmental organisation The Center for Civil Liberties CEGAS and media outlet Vijesti conducted a four-day online survey on the topic of the role and activities of local communities [8] in Montenegro.
