Demokrati genom civilt samhälle? Reflektioner kring Demokratiutredningens sanningspolitik

Abstract

Democracy through civil society? Reflections on the politics of truth of the commission on democracy. The concept of civil society has lately become fashionable in political as well as scientific contexts. This article critically discusses the 'politics of truth' in A Persistent Democracy!, the final report of the Swedish Commission on Democracy. The argument in the article is that the report over-stresses the importance of civil society and the role of individual responsibilities and initiatives against public arrangements and interventions, referred to in the report as state paternalism. The report is making specific 'technologies of government' visible, as it is creating citizens as primarily 'moral human beings'. The problem with strategies to 'roll back the State' for the benefit of a civil society of this kind, is that they necessarily open up for inequalities and conflicts in-built in civil society. To deepen democracy presupposes a continuous long-term struggle for changing predominant power structures and unequal distributions of vital resources, material and non-material. In this perspective, the report of the Swedish Commission on Democracy does not offer an adequate answer to challenging questions for the future of a vitalized Swedish democracy.