#10271. Who talks and who listens? A qualitative analysis of citizen dialogues in rural Sweden

November 2026publication date
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Sociology and Political Science;
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Abstract:
Inclusion in local policy processes through citizen dialogue has been depicted as both the solution to many democratic challenges and a democratic problem in itself. Nevertheless, it has been widely adopted throughout Europe. The hierarchically flat, co-governing setup of these instruments can be expected to clash with representative-heavy political cultures, such as that in Sweden, which raises questions about what role they end up having in this context and whether they complement representative democracy. By conducting a comparative study of two rural Swedish municipalities, we confirmed that traditional, hierarchical governance indeed dominates the studied processes.
Keywords:
citizen dialogue; Local democracy; political representativeness; representative democracy; rural democracy; town meeting

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