The promise and perils of the participatory turn in urban governance. A study of the democratic qualities of participatory governance arrangements in Swedish cities from 2000 to 2025

The participatory turn in urban governance is represented as a challenge to dominant entrepreneurial models that privilege centralized, flexible, and a shallower democratic governance.

The surge in democratic reform ambitions spreading in cities bear promises of democracy by implementing participatory governance arrangements (PGAs) with the purpose of increasing legitimacy and problem solution capacities in governance. But how genuine and effective are these PGAs?

The purpose of this project is to enhance the understanding of the realization, promise and perils of PGAs in urban governance by investigating the implementation in two Swedish cities between 2000 and 2025, a beneficial context for their realization.

The project asks what and how participatory and deliberative governance models are implemented and what  their democratic qualities are, and how can these be deepened?

This will be done by a comparative historical review of the participatory turn in two urban governance contexts (2000-2015) and through case-study analysis of present implementation of PGAs (2015-2025). New empirical investigations are guided by experiences of several previous studies in the same cities.

Given the polarized research front on these matters, the project will develop theory on impediments and opportunities for PGAs and their democratic qualities. The purpose is also to develop applicable theory on the preconditions for the deepening democratic qualities of PGAs.