Comparing local politicians’ and bureaucrats’ assessments of democratic participation: the cases of Norway and Sweden
| Author | Jon Pierre,B. Guy Peters,Annelin Gustavsen,Asbjørn Røiseland |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020852315598214 |
| Date | 01 December 2017 |
| Published date | 01 December 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Review of
Administrative
Article
Sciences
International Review of
Administrative Sciences
2017, Vol. 83(4) 658–675
Comparing local politicians’ and
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DOI: 10.1177/0020852315598214
of democratic participation:
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the cases of Norway and Sweden
Jon Pierre
University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Asbjørn Røiseland
University of Nordland, Norway
B. Guy Peters
University of Pittsburgh, USA
Annelin Gustavsen
Nordland Research Institute, Norway
Abstract
Given the increasing emphasis on delivery and output as a source of legitimacy for local
government, how do politicians and civil servants perceive conventional, input-based
channels for citizens’ influence on government in relationship to performance and
output-oriented opportunities to influence public service? This article compares the
attitudes of senior local politicians and civil servants in Norwegian and Swedish local
authorities on these issues. The analysis draws on a data set collected among political
and administrative leaders in Norwegian and Swedish local authorities. We also com-
pare a service sector where public management reform has been extensive (care of the
elderly) with a service sector where regulation and law enforcement dominates (plan-
ning and construction). The analysis suggests that there is a significant similarity
between politicians’ and bureaucrats’ attitudes, although politicians accord greater
importance to input-based channels of influence and to throughput than do bureaucrats.
Points for practitioners
Public management reform provides a new channel for clients to influence public service
directly through the providers of those services and not through conventional political
channels. This article studies how politicians and public servants in Norwegian and
Corresponding author:
Jon Pierre, University of Gothenburg – Political Science, Box 711, Gothenburg SE-40530, Sweden.
Email: Jon.Pierre@pol.gu.se
Pierre et al.
659
Swedish municipalities evaluate conventional and new channels for clients to influence
service delivery. We also compare service sectors where such choice is extensive with
areas where choice is much more constrained. Overall, we find that politicians tend to
favor conventional political channels for clients’ influence whereas public servants take a
more positive view of clients approaching the executive side of the local authority.
Keywords
administration and democracy, citizen participation, contracting out, implementation,
public management
Introduction: politicians, civil servants, and local public
management reform
The adaptation of local government to external pressures has been complex and far
from uniform. Public management reform, cutbacks, global pressures, and increas-
ingly assertive clients present powerful challenges to elected officials and civil ser-
vants; yet, at the surface, only few changes in institutional structures and roles seem
to be implemented (see Carboni, 2010; Svara, 2001: 176). Furthermore, adminis-
trative reform and public management reform have second- and third-order
consequences that challenge this apparent stability. For instance, public manage-
ment reform in the rather conventional Weberian bureaucracies in Norway and
Sweden – the two countries studied in this article – has opened up new points of
contact for citizens, or ‘customers’, with the public sector (Crozier, 2010; Stewart
et al., 2005), urging bureaucracies to accommodate the flow of communication not
just top-down but also bottom-up (Kettl, 1997). Even so, however, government
looks and behaves remarkably similar to what it did several decades ago (Pierre,
2009).
Or does it? This article explores changes in the institutional roles of elected
officials and civil servants in the face of reform aiming at opening up service-
delivering institutions to citizens for their direct input about those services. To
what extent have such reforms altered entrenched political and administrative
roles in local government, and how do officials assess these emergent (in these
systems) and additional channels of citizens’ potential influence on public service
as compared to conventional channels, such as political parties and general elec-
tions? How much change is taking place behind the stable facades of local autho-
rities in response to the empowerment of citizens qua customers and public
management reform?
The article compares political and bureaucratic leaders’ attitudes toward repre-
sentative democracy and the new modes of participation that public management
reform has provided. There are several good reasons to compare the two groups of
leaders in this context. First, from the perspective of representative bureaucracy
(Andrews et al., 2005) and the ‘representation of attitudes’ (Bradbury and
Kellough, 2008), we should expect attitudes among politicians and bureaucrats
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International Review of Administrative Sciences 83(4)
to converge. If the relationship strongly diverges instead, this would indicate a
challenge to local representative democracy. In that case, increasing resources
should be spent on monitoring and controlling bureaucrats. In a recent study of
Norwegian local government, Jacobsen (2012) finds a pattern of congruence
between political and administrative leaders on several dimensions, including
user participation. However, politicians’ and bureaucrats’ attitudes differ more
regarding New Public Management (NPM) reforms, such as competitive tendering
and privatization.
A second reason for exploring these attitudes among politicians and bureaucrats
can be derived from the literature on bureaucratic roles. Despite the declining
significance of the classic Weberian model as a paradigm for the public sector, it
has so far not been replaced with any single model that can provide descriptive and
prescriptive certainty (Peters, 2009a). Roles such as the classic bureaucrat, the
manager, the policymaker, the negotiator, and the democrat belong to a set of
contending prescriptions for the current public administrator. The latter role
relates directly to the recently introduced output-based channels for citizen partici-
pation, expecting bureaucrats to take on a democratic role. The extent to which
bureaucrats actually assume that role or how they assess this channel, however, has
not been explored empirically.
Changing roles and relationships
One of the most profound changes in the modus operandi of local government over
the past couple of decades has been the introduction of markets into public service
delivery and the empowerment of the clients of those services to choose among
competing service providers. NPM reform has meant that, in the words of Miller
and Rose (2008: 105), the ‘logics of welfare bureaucracies are replaced by new
logics of competition’. This ‘new logic’ alters the roles of elected officials and
civil servants from sustaining due process and equal treatment to regulating com-
petition and markets in public service delivery. Since citizens typically engage the
public sector and thus experience the changes brought about by reform at the local
level, this consequence of reform plays out much more clearly at the local govern-
ment level compared to the national level (Peters and Pierre, 2012).
All of this suggests that the impact of reform, particularly those elements of
reform that most immediately relate to the exchanges between citizens and the
public sector, can be investigated most readily at the local government level. The
close working relationships of politicians and bureaucrats, and their proximity to
citizens, make these exchanges especially vulnerable to reform efforts. Against that
backdrop, this article reports a study on local government politicians and civil
servants in Norway and Sweden with regard to the impact of public management
reform on their respective roles in the political system. Public management reform
has significantly challenged the role of the politicians as representatives of the
citizens. To some extent, the separation of policy and operations in the local pol-
itical system, and the introduction of political steering by defining goals and
Pierre et al.
661
delegating operative responsibilities to civil servants, has redefined the nature of
elective office at the local level.
The conventional role of the civil servant in these Weberian systems has also
changed significantly. By opening up additional channels for input about public
services, citizens have been offered a legitimate, alternative pathway into local
government. Unlike conventional, collective input channels, customer choice
models of service delivery enable the individual client/customer to choose among
competing service producers and also to engage civil servants much more directly
than was possible in the conventional bureaucratic arrangement. Reform has
meant that civil servants have become legitimate targets for citizens and clients
(Brewer, 2007). These models thus open up the previously impenetrable local public
administration to citizens, who can engage the political system both through the
conventional, representative channel and by stating their claims directly to civil
servants. This change has been most strongly felt among those public administra-
tors who previously had very little, if any, ex officio direct contact with clients. For
street-level bureaucrats like social workers, teachers, and police officers, however,
the effects of this element of...
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