Medborgarförslag - ett sätt att stärka demokratin? En ideologianalys med kommunalt fokus

Sammanfattning: This thesis aims at analysing conflicts between different ideals of democracy, using the example of a newly implemented citizen´s initiative reform. This reform gives citizens the right to make policy proposals to Swedish municipal councils. The proposals are to be handled in the same way as proposals from the municipal council members. An ideology analysis of various government documents as well as of an official state study (SOU) is carried out to identify and discuss the ideals of democracy that underpin the reform. The analysis is based on participatory democracy and electoral democracy theory and Arnstein's Eight Rungs on the Ladder of Citizen Participation is used to discuss different types of participation by the citizens. To describe the functioning of the citizen´s initiative reform at the municipal level, a case study of the municipalities of Botkyrka and Lund is conducted. The results of the paper clearly point out that the Swedish government simultaneously advocates both participatory democracy and electoral democracy. The thesis also shows that promoting a combination of several ideals of democracy is problematic if the primary democracy values of the democracy ideals are disregarded.