Medborgarna, politikerna och sjukvården : En studie av attityder och demokrati

The actors in focus here are the citizens and the politicians. We are studying their opinions on two central issues of health-care policy during the period 1981-1991. The aims of the dissertation can be summarised as follows: - to study the compositions of citizens´attitudes to health-care provision and policy - to examine the value of using different methodical approaches when studying health-care - to describe and compare the citizens´and the politicians´views on health-care provision and policy - to relate the empirical findings to normative democratic theory in order to decide which model of democracy receives the strongest empirical support. Acess to both quantitative and qualitative material for elucidating citizens´attitudes to the health-care system has, inter alia, indicated two methodical problems. The results from the interviews indicate that citizens´level of knowledge is probably lower than is indicated by the questionnaires. In cases when set alternatives are given, this tends to result in an overestimation of the level of knowledge. The view of persons of normative democratic theory is strongly oriented towards citizens´interest and knowledge as well as opinions on political issues and the political system. From this perspective, the conclusion is that the view of persons of the elitist democracy school gets the stronger support from the empirical material. The political interest is low and the knowledge is relatively week. If we extend the view of persons to include also citizens´relationship to the output of the plitical system, in the form of the functions of the health-care system, the conclusion is rather different. Particularly the interest, but also the knowledge are high. It is not a matter of a completely rational opinion formation, but the prerequisites are considerably higher.