<p>This thesis aims at investigating the relationship between citizens' attempts to influence decision-making in a democracy and the representativeness of policy outcome. The question is to what extent the degree of citizen political activity, in terms of expressing policy preferences, affects: 1. The <i>policy agreement</i> between citizens and their elected representatives. 2. The <i>perceptual accuracy</i> of citizen opinions among representatives. It is argued that both policy agreement and perceptual accuracy are potentially important prerequisites to attain responsiveness in a democratic political system. The important normative question of the thesis is based on the fact that citizen's attempts to influence public decision-making often seems to be biased in favour of social groups already rich in resources. If political participation is socially biased the question is if this participation also will cause a bias in the opinions articulated towards decisionmakers and in the end also in a biased political influence.</p><p>Earlier research on the topic of this thesis has basically been limited to the classical study published by Sidney Verba and Norman H. Nie in 1972: <i>Participation in America. Political democracy and social equality.</i> In order to examine this issue further, a survey was conducted in 40 Swedish municipalities. Included was a random sample of citizen from each municipality as well as a sample including all elected councilors in the municipalities. The effects of four different channels of citizen preference articulation is examined 1) participation in local elections, 2) non-electoral political participation, 3) activities and membership in voluntary associations and 4) everyday contacts between citizens and their elected representatives.</p><p>The results of the empirical analyses show that electoral participation does not have a positive effect on either policy agreement or perceptual accuracy in Swedish municipalities. The main tendency as regards the non-electoral channels of citizen preference articulation indicates a linear and positive effect on the policy agreement between citizens and representatives but no similar positive effect on the perceptual accuracy. </p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA/oai:DiVA.org:uu-7082 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Wohlgemuth, Daniel |
| Publisher | Uppsala University, Department of Government, Uppsala : Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Doctoral thesis, monograph, text |
| Relation | Skrifter utgivna av Statsvetenskapliga föreningen i Uppsala, 0346-7538 ; 165 |
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