The essay aims to investigate how much space children and young people are given to participate in Swedish society under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The purpose of the paper is to examine the degree of children's and young people's participation that is expressed within the framework of Swedish authority exercise at both national and local levels. With a specific focus on Jönköping municipality’s work with participation at the local level. The participation-oriented projects were analyzed through Roger Hart’s (1992) ladder of participation model. The model displays different levels of participation in projects and assigns them a level accordingly to how well they do it. Hart’s model was used in determining which levels the national and local projects fit in, to investigate if they can be seen as allowing children and young people to truly participate. The methods used were qualitative in nature, with document analysis and a semi-structured interview. The document analysis was utilized both on the national and local level to identify how participation is worked with, and which projects are currently operating. The document analysis was conducted with a thematic analysis with the themes originating from the critique made by the UN: Children’s rights committee. Meanwhile the semi-structured expert interview was used to collect more information about how Jönköping municipality works with children and young people's participation and their active projects. The results show that the participation of children and young people is a work in progress at all stages and must be improved in Swedish society to better fulfill the stipulations of the convention. The main improvements needed are how it is to be applied in practice and that there is enough educated personnel that can enable the creation of arenas where children and young people can truly participate.