Abstract

“Political participation by the citizen”

- Citizen proposals in Karlstad municipality

Essay in Political Science, C-level

Author: Tobias Gustafsson

Tutor: Michele Micheletti

In Sweden the political parties are losing more and more of their members. That in combination with a tendency that the participation in the elections is getting lower is a problem for the representative and parliamentary political system in Sweden.

In order to strengthen the democracy in Sweden and to make the gap between the citizens and the elected smaller there has been some democracy-projects. The purpose of these democracy-projects is to make the political participation by the citizens, between the elections, higher. One of them is “citizen proposals to the municipality”.

The purpose of this essay is to examine this democracy-project in order to see what influences it might have on the local democracy. The local democracy is defined as “the big democracy” within Karlstad municipality. The study is mainly conducted as a survey.

In order to determine the purpose three specified research questions has been constructed:

1. How is “citizen proposals to the municipality” dealt with?

2. Who are the citizens which utilize the right to “citizen proposals to the municipality”?

3. How effective is “citizen proposals to the municipality”?

The answer to the first question is: There is a developed formal way of dealing with the proposals at Karlstad municipality. The dealing with the “citizen proposals to the municipality” is a procedure that is time-consuming and there is a lack of information of the right to give “citizen proposals to the municipality”. The answer to the second question is: those citizens most likely to be political active are a man with high education, in his middle ages with an average income. He has an occupation and is political active in the local elections, but he is not a member of a political party. Observe though that there is a broad spectrum of those who propose suggestions in the examine group. The answer to the third question is that it is possible to get your proposal sanctioned. However the citizens feel’s that there is a problem with how the municipality handles the proposal after it has been sanctioned. Most of the citizens are not happy with how their proposal has been handled after it has been sanctioned. They feel that there pass to much time between the sanction and that the proposal is accomplished.