Medborgardialog – Hjälper eller stjälper den representativa demokratin? : En kvalitativ studie av medborgardialoger i svenska kommuner

Sammanfattning: This study focuses on the potential benefits and potential risks of citizen dialogues. These dialouges offer a new structured way for communication between local politcians and municipal officials on one hand and citizens on the other, that arguably could serve as way to include citizens in the local societal development. However, they can also increase inequality regarding the influence over local political issues, lead to increased distrust of the political institutions or be used to legitimize decisions that are already made. Our intentions with this study are to: identify the basic criteria in participatory- and deliberative democracy theory that can be applied to citizen dialogues in Swedish municipalities. If these basic criteria exist, we want to investigate whether citizen dialogues in Swedish municipalities meet these. Lastly, we want to see how these basic criteria can create an understanding of how citizen dialogues in Swedish municipalities need to be developed. These criteria has been identified as: participation, equality, reasoning, mutual respect and information. Through a qualitative text analysis of reports from citizen dialouges made by Swedish municipalities, we have found that none of these criteria were met.