Deltagandets chimär? En granskning av demokratins utveckling i fyra skånska kommuner

In this essay I study the democracy enhancing projects on the municipal level in four different cities. The purpose is to determine how the local governments respond to the outer pressure to supplement the traditional democratic forms with new ones that will allow the citizens to participate more extensively in the democratic process. The ideas of increased public participatory have become trendy and theoretical extensively spread, the question is how the movement correspond on the empirical municipal level? I will also explore how these ideas have changed over time. My preconception is that the organizations by legitimacy reasons adopt the ideas but not to the extent that it will influence the decisionmaking process in a more potent way. The result of the survey gives us somewhat ambiguous answers but still confirms much of my preconceptions. The theoretical framework consists of a combination of different organizational theories that will be helpful to understand in what way the local public organizations are affected by these popular ideas and how they respond. I have chosen to analyze their reactions from both a symbolic and an instrumental perspective to get a more comprehensive view of which different motives the organisations are driven by