Democracy in Sweden is facing a plethora of serious challenges. The ability of political parties to engage and activate non-political citizens have been greatly reduced over the last 50 years, meanwhile the risk of increased polarization the coming years is prominent and alarming. This essay attempts to combine modern representative democracy with the ideal of deliberative democracy. The aim is to investigate if deliberation can contribute to the solution of these problems. This is accomplished through a study inspired by James Fishkin’s Deliberative Poll. Local politicians in Sweden have been invited to answer a questionnaire after which they participate in deliberation before answering a second questionnaire. The difference in results between the two questionnaires are then compared to show the effect of deliberation. There is a clear visual difference between the politician’s answers in the two questionnaires. Nevertheless, this difference is only statistically proven in one out of the 22 tests that were run. Therefore, this study cannot draw any conclusions regarding the true effect of deliberation. Nevertheless, deliberation among local politicians in Sweden seems to be successful based on a visual comparison of the results from the two questionnaires and further study is deemed desirable.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:mdh-54831 |
| Date | January 2021 |
| Creators | Axelson, Jacob, Axklo, Milena |
| Publisher | Mälardalens högskola, Akademin för ekonomi, samhälle och teknik, Mälardalens högskola, Akademin för ekonomi, samhälle och teknik |
| 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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