Deliberation i det nya seklet

As a result of the official report on democracy (Demokratiutredningen), the Swedish government decided in 2002 to prescribe by law the right of initiation for common citizens in city councils (medborgerlig förslagsrätt). All citizens are therefore now entitled to submit a proposal which then will be dealt with by the city council as a motion. In this paper the handling of the citizen proposal is seen as a dialogue between the citizen and the city council. Based on theory of deliberative democracy, a number of ”dimensions” are set up: Rationality, Agreement and Disagreement,Common Description of Reality, Reciprocity and Responsiveness, Publicity, and Equality and Inclusion. and utltimately are thought to describe what deliberation should consist of ideally. A normative evaluation is then carried out by applying these dimensions to a material of six citizen proposals from the municipality of Lund. The leading question is: to what extent does the deliberation that arise due to citizen proposals live up to certain ideals of deliberative democracy? With the help of existing models, coding schemes and elements of textual analysis, the paper makes the final summarized conclusion that deliberation in the handling of citizen proposals still has a long way to go