Medborgarförslag och demokrati

Sammanfattning: In our Swedish representative democracy the citizens have the possibility to use their political power every fourth year when they choose their political representatives. There is an understanding by the theorists of democracy that the political participation should not be limited simply to the election years. A method that almost every Swedish municipality uses to increase the political participation of the citizens is to give them the opportunity to file a citizen initiative to the city council. With the government’s bill 2001/02:80 and the changing of the municipal act the 1 July 2002 this was made possible. But the question is if this is an efficient method to increase the democracy in the municipality? In this evaluating case study I have reached the conclusion that the system with citizen initiative has many weaknesses and that it does not work as an efficient method for increasing the democracy in the municipality. I have found that the persons that file citizen initiatives are not representative for the municipality and therefore this system does not increase the democracy significantly.