Politikerprojekt eller medborgardialog? En studie om de geografiska utskotten i Linköpings kommun

In the municipality of Linköping there are eleven geographical committees where politicians from the city council sit. This phenomenon is unique of its kind in Sweden. Through a series of interviews with politicians the thesis examines four of the geographical committees in more detail, in order to investigate the importance these may have for civic dialogue and a developed local democracy. The empirical findings emerging from the study is evaluated by using a number of previous studies in the field of local democracy work. The results show that the geographical committees can not be said to be only a good or a bad attempt to expand civic dialogue and local democracy. On the one hand, some people have been able to create a better dialogue with policy makers and the politicians’ proximity to the citizens has increased. On the other hand, difficulties such as the failure to reach all citizens, lack of economic resources, a perceived role confusion, political powerlessness in committees, an absence of procedures for feedback to citizens, that the project is dependent on interested and engaged politicians and that the advisory boards are late to inform the geographical committees on various related aspects of treatment could be detected