Only for Citizens? Encouraging Local Public Participation on Municipal Websites in Sweden

Local citizen participation and engagement are often considered crucial to the implementation of sustainable development. With fast development of digitalization and e-governance there is a growing interest in local... [ view full abstract ]

Local citizen participation and engagement are often considered crucial to the implementation of sustainable development. With fast development of digitalization and e-governance there is a growing interest in local authorities’ websites, including e-government and participation as popular themes for research. This study considers the use of local websites by Swedish municipalities for general information about different means for public participation. As the population structure in Sweden is rapidly changing and a growing number of residents in a municipality are not citizens in a legal sense there is a need to discuss the terminology used by local governments on their websites. While some instruments for increased   political participation at local level use ’citizenship’ related terminology, such as ‘citizen proposals’ and ‘citizen dialogue’, there are examples of municipalities that already switch terminology from ‘citizen’ to ‘resident’ as in the case of ‘resident dialogue’. The Local Government Act states that citizenship is not required in order to vote in local elections, and there should be no reason for local authorities to address their ‘residents’, by using the more exclusive term ‘citizens’. Another issue of great interest in this context is why there is  low awareness about the instrument for direct democracy called people´s initiative [folkinitiativ].  The following main research questions are posed.  Are the local authorities encouraging political participation by giving comprehensive information about different tools for participation and influence? Are the local authorities informing about the right of initiative?  Are the local authorities using including (resident) or excluding (citizen) terms on their websites? Municipality is the common legal label of the 290 local self-government units in Sweden, and all of them provide information on their websites. Content analysis have been conducted of all local government websites between October 2017 and 6 January 2018 using an evaluation questionnaire.  Results show that all municipalities have information about ‘local politics’ at their portals. Nevertheless, not all of them provide information about different tools for participation, and the amount, and quality of this information vary. Only 75 % of the municipalities providing such information do it under a specific subheading for influence/dialogue/ participation. The share of subheading with ’influence’ [påverkan] (29 %) is almost the same as with ‘dialogue’ [dialog] 28%. The word ‘democracy’ is used as a subheading in 7% of the municipalities. Surprisingly, not more than 5 % inform residents about their right of initiative. The share of municipalities targeting their residents as ‘resident’/ ‘resident of the municipality’   is 21 % while the share of targeting their residents as ‘citizen’ / ‘citizen of the municipality’ is 26 % . The share with a mixed used is 6 %.  “You” or “resident of” are used as targets by 22 % of the municipalities.  One conclusion is that efforts to increase public participation in a municipality should not be addressed as citizen participation, as citizenship is a term that is too narrow and exclusive. Accordingly, the use of the term ‘citizen’ at local portals when informing residents about their participation opportunities   should be reviewed. The Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SALAR) should support municipalities in these attempts as well as in providing information about people’s initiative.