Citizen Dialogue in Urban and Rural Municipalities - A Study in Comparative Local Government
(2021) SOCM04 20202Sociology
Department of Sociology
- Abstract
- Citizen dialogue is an element of direct democracy that has been implemented within Sweden’s local governments since the start of the century. There is a significant difference in population size between the largest and smallest municipalities in Sweden. This thesis explored how urban and rural municipalities work with citizen dialogues. The purpose was to not only understand the functioning of direct democracy within local governments of contrasting sizes, but also to contribute with knowledge to the research gap regarding a bureaucratic-centered perspective. To that end, I have conducted 10 semi-structured interviews with officials on their experiences in working with citizen dialogues - half of which worked in urban municipalities, and... (More)
- Citizen dialogue is an element of direct democracy that has been implemented within Sweden’s local governments since the start of the century. There is a significant difference in population size between the largest and smallest municipalities in Sweden. This thesis explored how urban and rural municipalities work with citizen dialogues. The purpose was to not only understand the functioning of direct democracy within local governments of contrasting sizes, but also to contribute with knowledge to the research gap regarding a bureaucratic-centered perspective. To that end, I have conducted 10 semi-structured interviews with officials on their experiences in working with citizen dialogues - half of which worked in urban municipalities, and the other half in rural municipalities. In light of this, the empirical findings were comparatively analysed through an elaboration on governing theories and governance theories by Jacosson et al. Furthermore, the empirical findings were compared to a relevant literature review. The comparative analysis gave rise to four aspects in which urban and rural municipalities differed in working with citizen dialogues, namely in terms of 1) the role of politicians in citizen dialogue 2) the current style of work with citizen dialogue, 3) the ideal style of work with citizen dialogue, and 4) the limitations of citizen dialogue. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9037016
- author
- Fadhl, Mostafa LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- SOCM04 20202
- year
- 2021
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- Size and local democracy, Local government, Comparative analysis
- language
- English
- id
- 9037016
- date added to LUP
- 2021-01-22 14:23:00
- date last changed
- 2021-01-22 14:23:00
@misc{9037016,
abstract = {{Citizen dialogue is an element of direct democracy that has been implemented within Sweden’s local governments since the start of the century. There is a significant difference in population size between the largest and smallest municipalities in Sweden. This thesis explored how urban and rural municipalities work with citizen dialogues. The purpose was to not only understand the functioning of direct democracy within local governments of contrasting sizes, but also to contribute with knowledge to the research gap regarding a bureaucratic-centered perspective. To that end, I have conducted 10 semi-structured interviews with officials on their experiences in working with citizen dialogues - half of which worked in urban municipalities, and the other half in rural municipalities. In light of this, the empirical findings were comparatively analysed through an elaboration on governing theories and governance theories by Jacosson et al. Furthermore, the empirical findings were compared to a relevant literature review. The comparative analysis gave rise to four aspects in which urban and rural municipalities differed in working with citizen dialogues, namely in terms of 1) the role of politicians in citizen dialogue 2) the current style of work with citizen dialogue, 3) the ideal style of work with citizen dialogue, and 4) the limitations of citizen dialogue.}},
author = {{Fadhl, Mostafa}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Citizen Dialogue in Urban and Rural Municipalities - A Study in Comparative Local Government}},
year = {{2021}},
}