Transparent Public Decision Making: Discussion and Case Study in Sweden

Abstract

The Swedish city of Örebro has since long faced complex problems with poor water quality in a local river. This problem is a typical example of a regional decision problem, since there are several different stakeholders that might be affected, and there are different views on the need for, and effect of, different measures. The problems also strongly relate to the environmental condition of the river and involve other municipalities as well. In this chapter, we describe how to address this problem using an implementation of a systematic democratic decision process for enhancing the transparency and the decision quality in itself. The process is in conformity with common democratic processes, but with higher emphasis on accuracy and precision and on the interaction between civil servants and decision makers. A main issue here is to clearly separate the various views involved in these processes from the actual facts and, at the same time, facilitate input from various stakeholders. Therefore, we allow for modelling of outcomes based on different preferences and facilitate an elicitation process where views are extracted and combined with basic data from the background investigations preceding the decision. The process is divided into two stages. The first one is emphasized in this chapter and concerns the internal democracy, i.e. the formulation and refinement of the original and extended decision problems and the interaction between politicians and civil servants, while the second stage deals with the external democracy, i.e. the communication with the public, where communication channels directed towards citizens will be formed.