This thesis brings together democratic theory's calls for an understanding of the actually existing democratic state and anthropological work on innovative forms of citizen participation. Building on the work of Joao Biehl and Steven Robins, the research focuses on access to knowledge and claims of expertise as grounds upon which politicians and bureaucrats exclude citizen participation. It argues, using an ethnographic case study of South African student activist group Equal Education, that authors such as Max Weber, Michel Foucault, and James Scott are wrong to imply that citizens cannot train themselves in the technocratic manner frequently deployed by the state's representatives. It also argues, however, that the state's representatives are often not the technocrats they are hypothesised to be or that they claim to be, and their knowledge practices cannot be separated from politics. This makes the process through which citizens establish expertise and credibility with the government more complicated than simply training themselves in the government's knowledge practices. Drawing on the work of Danielle Allen and Francesca Polletta, the thesis thus also examines how questions of personal experience and identity on grounds of lived experience as well as claimed or perceived identity often interact with claims to knowledge, opening up or shutting down citizens' ability to participate. Even when citizens are able to leverage their technocratic expertise to successfully influence policy creation, they may still find it difficult to effectively participate in the implementation thereof beyond external monitoring and accountability enforcement. The thesis concludes that the current democratic theory ought not be so pessimistic about the spectre of a know-nothing citizenry, but nor ought it presume that education and expertise alone will be sufficient for democratic governments to take seriously an involved and engaged citizenry.

This thesis explores potential participatory approaches suitable for a municipal energy planning context. It also analyses the possibility of using those approaches in energy planning processes in ten Swedish municipalities. Swedish municipal energy plans display differences in terms of quality, comprehensiveness and implementation. According to participation literature, planning processes can be improved by stakeholder participation. This study was carried out in four steps: creation of a theoretical framework, survey investigating the municipal energy planners’ views on participation, relating the planners’ views with the theoretical framework and creating suggestions for which participatory approaches to use in the municipalities. Participatory approaches found in literature were categorised into: democracy based, social learning and policy driven participation. Literature states that stakeholder participation should be done as early as possible in a process, but findings from the survey show that those municipalities that have come furthest in their planning process are the ones most interested in stakeholder participation. Indicating that energy planning processes need to gain a sense of maturity before it is even possible to think about involving other stakeholders. Another result shows differences in objectives, central values and targeted stakeholders between the different municipalities. One conclusion from this thesis is the importance for municipalities to understand their objectives for stakeholder participation, since objectives partly determines what kind of participatory approach that will be suitable to use in a given situation.