En studie av deltagardemokratiska experiment - trend eller verktyg?
SymbolpolitikDeltagardemokratiIdéspridningMedborgarstämmorPolitical and administrative sciencesStatsvetenskapFörvaltningskunskapLaw and Political Science
The Swedish public inquiries and most of the political science advocate reforms in the spirit of participatory democracy to strengthen the democracy. Although it is striking how limited and narrow the scientific documentation is in analysing the effects of participatory democratic reforms. Still, many of the local governments in Sweden are reshaping their organisations according to the participatory democracy model. Is it a trend and a symbolic action or a veritable action of good-will of the politicians?The paper argues that the idea of participatory democracy has become popular and widely spread. This can be explained both in an instrumental and in a symbolic perspective. This case study of why and on which ground Lund was inspired to reform their organization explicitly by a model of Kungälv, shows that the local government has motivated and legitimized this particularly model on symbolic grounds. Revealed by the discrepancy between the ideal and the reform and clarified by the taxonomy of symbolic action.