Demokratiutredningens arv : En idealtypsanalys av riksdagsmotioner gällande lobbyism

Sammanfattning: For the last decades, Sweden has transformed from a state with strong elements of corporatism, to a governance of pluralistic character. This development has opened up to a new form of participation – lobbyism – which since has spread and commercialized. Because of this, a report on the state of Swedish democracy – Demokratiutredningen – was issued to examine the phenomenon of lobbyism as it was feared to challenge the functioning of a representative democracy. The report issued a warning of the negative impact on transparency and political equality a professionalization of lobbying could have. Even some forms of regulation were thought to have a negative impact on the political equality. Since the report was released in 2000, nine bills regarding lobbyism have been presented to the Swedish parliament, but no regulation has yet been implemented. The report identified problems regarding transparency and political equality with both regulated and unregulated lobbying. The aim of this thesis is to examine how the parliamentary bills handle the democratic problems voiced by the report. The bills are analyzed with the ideal types of “transparency” and “political equality”, based on Robert Dahl’s ideal of democracy. The study found that the problem of transparency was of a high priority in the bills, while the problem of political equality was hardly addressed. Three of the bills actually ignored the warning issued by the report, where a regulation in the form of registration was thought to have a negative impact on political equality. The fact that the bills hardly addressed the problem of political equality, and in some cases even worsened it, represents a democratic deficit in the regulation debate.