59 percent of Swedes think that Swedish democracy has weakened in the last 5-10 years according to recent a survey made by Novus. As as confirmation for this, Swedish democracy has also dropped by 5 percent in The Economist’s index of democracy during the same period.

Since democracy is a process driven by participation, there is reason to suspect that it is not the, today just under 4 per mille of Swedes, who are directly involved in the country’s political rule between elections, who have not taken their role in democracy seriously. Rather, one can fear that it is really us, the more than 99.6 percent, who are now completely outside the political control that has really failed to done so.

In Folkstyret – The Future of Democracy, we first look back at our democratic history and see how we have handled the demands for increased legitimacy and individual freedom that we have encountered on our way here. With that in mind, we can look ahead and see what may be there, provided that the current and future demands for increased legitimacy will be handled in a similar way as before.

It is entirely in our own power to shape our future so that our democracy really becomes stronger, more inclusive and representative.