Till vilken nytta? Om det lokala politiska deltagandets karaktär ...

internal exclusion, i.e. the dismissal, patronising or simply ignoring of
some participants or statements.
Lastly it should be noted that the character of the different types and
their usefulness for different political issues means that they should be
regarded as complementary rather than contradictory.
The third aim concerns what can be termed the politics of democracy,
and develops on the empirical analysis just discussed. The empirical analysis
showed that even though a lot of effort has been put into including citizens
in local politics, the results have been somewhat disappointing. Thus it is
important to consider the over-arching democratic context as a means to
understand the somewhat poor effects and uneasy cooperation between
citizens and public decision-makers such as local politicians and civil
servants.
The question here is which discourses are central to the politics of
democracy and what are the consequences for new forms of participation?
This is assessed through a discourse analysis of a variety of official government
sources including: Swedish Government Official Reports (SOU:s);
written communications from the Government (regeringsskrivelser);
committee reports (betänkanden); and Government Bills (propositioner).
The analysis allows the underlying democratic norms to be unveiled and
makes it possible to discover in what ways the Swedish representative
system is compatible to participatory (re)forms. Like all political systems
the Swedish representative system has its specific characteristics and is can
thereby arguably be more or less suitable for participatory reforms. From a
historic perspective the democracy discourse shows signs of both changes
and stability and the following characteristics appositely describe the norms
of Swedish politics of democracy from the 1970s until early-1990s:
• The political parties were the central institution in local democracy.
• The relationship between politicians and citizens was characterised as
one-way communication rather than dialogue.
• Local government was viewed as a service-provider rather than as a
democratic entity.
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