Lobbyism och vinster i välfärden

During the last 30 years the form for political participation in Sweden has changed from a corporatistic system to a pluralistic system of lobbying. This change has led to a number of democratic consequences, such as the unbalanced potential for using lobbyism between the labourmarket parties, the well-reasourced and less well-resourced as well as untransparent way of how lobbying is done. During the 2013 convention of the Socialdemocratic Party the issue whether companies in the welfare sector were to be allowed to make profit was much debated. The lobbying in connection to the convention was reported to be very significant. We wanted to find out if lobbying had a significant effect on the convention decision on this particular issue and also if some of the theories of the democratic consequences of lobbyism could be applied to this particular occation. Therefor we interviewed eight different people with a relation to the convention of their views of these matters. We then analized their answers in connection to the convention decision and the democratic theories on lobbyism. Our resault was that there were not enough evidence to prove lobbying had had a significant effect on the convention decision, although in a longer perspectiv it probably have had a significant effect. We also found that the case of the convention can be used as an example for where the potential for using lobbyism no longer is unbalanced and that the issue of intransparancy in the way lobbyists work remains to be solved