This study aims to investigate how municipalities respond to citizen input in consultation reports – a necessary and often mandatory documentation in the Swedish planning process. More specifically, building on the political-philosophical debate on deliberation as a democratic ideal, this study explores how local authorities' response to citizen input is structured and designed in these reports, and to what extent citizen input is recognized. By approaching a model for logics and considerations within sorting processes, I also seek to understand how local authorities motivate and explain their stances. More specifically, I examine whether considerations – made within a so called selective sorting – emphasize what ispossible, legal and/or proper to implement. The study is mainly based on a qualitative content analysis of consultation reports from three Swedish municipalities. The results of this study highlight, among other things, that the structure and design of the response from the local authorities depend on the structure and design of the input. Further, almost fifty percent of the total number of responses studied are rejected, where a vast majority of the few approvals given are weak/vague. Even though local authorities from all three municipalities motivate their stances based on what is possible, legal and proper, there are some general patterns. In total, almost half of all positions are justified on the basis of what is considered proper to implement, while approximately a fifth are justified on the basis of what is legal. Further, I have drawn attention to two more specific ways in which municipalities seem to motivate and explain their positions. These ways are defined as two categories that I have chosen to call aesthetics and external expertise.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:liu-170137 |
| Date | January 2020 |
| Creators | Fredriksson, Amira |
| Publisher | Linköpings universitet, Statsvetenskap |
| 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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