This paper aims to investigate attitudes amongst Swedish municipalities toward the Commission on Democracy’s (SOU 2016:5) proposal regarding implementing a pilot project where the voting age would be lowered to 16 in local elections. In addition to this, the paper intends to categorise the arguments highlighted by municipalities. Using content analysis, referrals made by 135 municipalities concerning the Commission on Democracy’s report are analysed. Analysing the results, the study shows that 46 percent of the municipalities were negative about the proposal while 24 percent were positive. The remaining municipalities were either neutral or did not give an answer. Examining the arguments, positive municipalities mostly emphasised arguments that are categorised as democracy enhancing and negative municipalities referred to arguments which concern the current constitutional order. Few arguments underlined competence or recognised the connection between the voting age and other rights and duties. In other words, most municipalities did not refer to the principle of inclusion or to the principle of competence, both of which, historically and currently, have been important principles to consider when discussing the voting age. Something to note is that these principles may have been unstated in some referrals and could thereby still have been influencing how municipalities viewed the proposal.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-475204 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Stenhols, Gustav |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Statsvetenskapliga institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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