Avsikter och ambitioner med medborgarbudgetering i Göteborg

Abstract

Syfte: Uppsatsen studerar två fall av medborgarbudgetering i Göteborgs stad med syftet att undersöka hur stadsdelsnämnderna avser demokratisera områdena. Teori: Teoriramen består av två idealtyper av medborgardialog som utgörs av ett idealistiskt perspektiv och ett kritiskt perspektiv. Metod: Kvalitativ textanalys och semi-strukturerade intervjuer. Resultat: Studiens resultat påvisar hur den politiska ambitionen samt syfte och genomförande i stadsdelarnas formuleringar går i linje med det idealistiska perspektivet. Däremot påvisas det hur en kritisk argumentationslinje återfinns bland de tjänstepersoner som varit delaktiga i processen.This study aims, through text analysis and semi-structured interviews, to research citizen dialogue. More specifically two cases of participatory budgeting in the city of Gothenburg taken place in Majorna-Linné and Västra Hisingen. Participatory budgeting is increasing in use within Swedish municipalities as a response to declining public democratic involvement and decreasing trust for political electives. General expectations on citizen dialogue and participatory budgeting is that trust and legitimacy will increase when citizens are given the opportunity to be involved in political decision making. Previous research on deliberative democracy and citizen dialogue shows different perspectives in how citizen dialogue often is framed. These are idealistic/normative and critical/cynical perspectives. These perspectives are used in this study and are aimed to categorize documents and interviews from both cases of participatory budgeting in the purpose to show in what ways the city districts intend to democratize society. The results show how the districts formulate the purpose and the implementation with participatory budgeting in idealistic characteristics. However, the study also shows conflicting ambitions regarding the political and operational level of the city districts. In particular public sector employees expressed arguments along the lines of the critical perspective regarding inclusion and making way for social change. Although, the political guidelines highly focused on idealistic arguments in terms of generating increased legitimacy and efficiency for political decisions. In conclusion both city districts, in spite of confliction ambitions, aim to democratize society in terms of the idealistic perspective meaning the participatory budgeting is highly process oriented and less focused on outcomes.