Falun on the road to becoming a ‘Democracy City’ in Sweden

Objectives

Reconnecting Falun

“Falun Democracy City” intends to reconnect with local people. As smaller communities were merged into bigger local authorities in the middle of last century the links between political decision-makers and citizens became weak in Sweden. Instead, local party politics took over. The “Democracy City” action plan aims at reviving local democracy by empowering citizens to make their voices heard. 

Culture of participation

There are several reasons why local councillors and officers are ready to pass more power and influence to local people:

• A majority of voters have cast their votes for councillor candidates who have put citizen participation high on their political agenda and who have been supportive of the ‘Democracy City’ project before the recent elections.
• Staff surveys indicate that the majority of the almost 7000 staff in Falun Council were aware that citizens are not only customers of public services but also have an active role to play in local planning and the commissioning of public services.
• A majority of the elected councillors accept that modern representative democracy also needs elements of direct democracy and participatory governance in order to ensure that their decisions represent the interests of all citizens.

In brief, there is a consensus in Falun that representative, direct and participatory democracy goes hand in hand. In ‘Falun Democracy City’, citizen participation is considered as the ‘software’ which makes the ‘hardware’ (in the form of representative democracy) work.