Between Local Government and Local Governance

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EUROPEANFORUM

LOCAL COUNCILLORS: BETWEEN LOCAL

GOVERNMENT AND LOCAL GOVERNANCE

KARIN HANSEN

With a two-dimensional concept of New Public Management as its point of depar-ture, the article points to the development of a specific Danish model of NPM atthe local level of government. In the municipalities the market-oriented NPMdimension has been almost absent and the managerial dimension has been inter-preted and translated into a governance-oriented model that combines decentral-ized self- and user-governance from below with centralized goal-steering fromabove. This combined model institutes new governing roles including a new leader-ship role for elected councillors as central goal-steering decision and policy makers.Rather than strengthening the local councillors, the new leadership role has turnedout to be problematic for the elected councillors. The problems inherent in the newinstitutional role as goal-steering decision makers are discussed and arguments are

put forward in favour of a more governance and less NPM and government-ori-ented role for elected councillors. What seems to be needed is another new rolethat stresses local councillors as co-governors and guardians of an inclusive anddemocratic form of local governance.

INTRODUCTION

Local government is like government in general in a state of change.Since the beginning of the 1980s, a wave of reorganization has swept thewelfare states of Europe and the Western world in order to modernize

the political and administrative institutions and structures of the publicsector. These efforts to reorganize and modernize the public sector are oftengathered under the common denominator of New Public Management

Karin Hansen is Associate Professor in the Department of Economics, Politics and Public Adminis-tration at the University of Aalborg, Denmark.

Public Administration Vol. 79 No. 1, 2001 (105123) Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2001, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street,Malden, MA 02148, USA.


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(NPM). NPM has become a new discourse and guiding principle for theinstitutional form and structure of modern welfare states.

Commonly NPM is comprehended as a special, new kind of administrat-ive policy, aiming at the institutional form and practice of public adminis-

tration, i.e. the administrative and service-delivering institutions of the pub-lic sector. However, not just administrative and service-deliveringinstitutions are being reorganized and modernized. The last twenty yearsof NPM restructurings encompass political institutions and ways oforganizing politics and public decision and policy making as well.

In this regard, New Public Management might more accurately be calledNew Public Government. The modernization policies of NPM cannot bereduced to a new kind of administrative policy, only dealing with prin-ciples and institutional organization of public administration and servicedelivery. The NPM restructurings are of a more far-reaching and consti-tutional kind, dealing with principles and institutional structures of publicpolitics and government.

This constitutional aspect and perspective of the ongoing modernizationof the public sector is more or less ignored in public and political debate.As pointed out by the Norwegian political scientist and new insti-tutionalist, Johan P. Olsen, the modernization reforms of Western welfarestates accentuate the need for a public constitutional debate about what

kind and form of democratic government we are going, and wish, to have.The ongoing modernization efforts are not just about public administration.It is the political and democratic constitution the institutional form ofgovernment that is at stake and being reorganized under the guidingprinciples of NPM (Olsen 1990, 1991, 1992).

Emphasizing NPM as a New Public Government concept and discourse,the article will focus on NPM reorganization at the local government levelof Denmark. As a guiding principle for the institutional restructurings ofthe modern welfare states, NPM has been interpreted and introduced dif-

ferently and with different impacts in various countries. There is no onemodel of NPM at play. Various NPM elements are stressed and combinedin more or less specific ways according to existing institutional structuresand traditions of the countries in question. At the Danish local governmentlevel a specific NPM model has been instituted, a model that attributesa set of new governing roles to the political and the administrative actors,including a new role for local councillors.

With an analytically clarified NPM concept as its point of departure, the

first part of the article describes the specificity of the Danish NPM reorgani-zations at the local level of government. The second part deals with thenew governing roles that are being instituted at the local level, especiallythe NPM role of local councillors as goal-steering political leaders. The goal-steering role will be discussed and arguments presented for another newkind of governance role for local councillors.

Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2001


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LOCAL COUNCILLORS 107

NPM AT THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT LEVEL THE DANISH CASE

As a common denominator for the various efforts to modernize the publicsector in advanced welfare states, NPM is a somewhat mixed buy. Theliterature often attempts to clarify the concept of NPM by shorter or longerlists of the many and different reorganization elements that have beenon the agendas and implemented as part of the various public sector mod-ernization programmes since the beginning of the 1980s. Often, these NPMdescriptions are coloured by the country-specific programmes and effortsof the particular states under consideration.

In an analytical perspective, such a descriptive NPM concept is not veryuseful. Not all reorganizations since the early 1980s can be aptly charac-terized as NPM oriented. Besides, such an all-encompassing NPM conceptdoes not leave room for a more precise specification of NPM variations andprofiles in different countries, at different times and at different levels andareas of government.

In order to grasp the different organization principles and elements gen-erally associated with the concept of NPM in a more conceptualizing andanalytically fruitful manner, these principles and elements may be categor-ized along two lines or dimensions: a market- and a management-orienteddimension of reorganization. A combination of these two dimensions canhelp narrow down the concept of NPM, as shown in figure 1. The vertical

axis, from hierarchy to market, illustrates efforts to marketize the public

FIGURE 1 Organizational principles of NPM: market and management dimensions



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sector either directly or indirectly by introducing market-like mechanismsinto the public sector at the expense of the hierarchical structure thathas been a characteristic feature of traditional public sector organization.Examples of such market-oriented reorganizations are:

privatization contracting out purchaser-provider models free choice/exit opportunities competitive and economic incentives

These examples are not meant to be illustrative of the continuum perspec-tive of figure 1. A continuum perspective may be relevant, some reorganiza-tions being more market-oriented or market-like than others. What is

important here, however, is to differentiate reorganization elements of thisvertical, market-oriented type from the horizontal, managerial type.

Whether we are talking about direct marketization through privatizationor of introducing various market-like mechanisms into the public sector,these reorganization elements lead to limitation or restraint of the scopeand degree of collective, political and administrative, decision-making infavour of more self-regulating and non-political mechanisms of social co-ordination. In this regard, the vertical types of reorganization differ fromthe ones illustrated by the horizontal axis in figure 1.

The horizontal axis, from rule-bound regulation and planning to auto-nomy of management, illustrates efforts to organize the public sectoraccording to new principles of leadership and management developed inthe private business sector. Common to this managerial reorganization isa new orientation of the public sector towards the output and outcomedimensions of political and administrative decision making at the expenseof input and process dimensions of public decision and policy making. Thepublic service institutions and administrative units are being freed from

traditional rule-bound regulations and planning directives from above inorder to deliver high quality services efficiently and responsively accordingto the needs of citizens as customers of public services. They are givenincreased possibilities and autonomy to manage their task performance andservice delivery in varying ways according to criteria of efficiency and out-come. Examples of this type of reorganization are:

decentralization of decision making competence and responsibility user influence goal steering/management by objectives

joint forums of strategic leadership efficiency monitoring service and quality management systems (Total Quality Management,

benchmarking, and the like).

These horizontal elements do not restrain, but innovate and restructure



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the organization of political and administrative decision and policy making.The principle of collective and public decision making is not being con-tested in favour of non-political and self-regulating mechanisms of co-ordi-nation as is the case of vertical reorganization elements.

These new managerial ways of organizing public decision and policymaking are primarily directed against institutional forms and centralizedsystems of planning and policy making, developed during the post-warperiod of welfare state expansion. It is the central, rule-bound regulationsand planning systems of the welfare state that are being questioned in fav-our of more decentralized and autonomous forms of public decision mak-ing and task performance at the different policy areas and levels.

NPM may be seen as a complex combination of these two different typesof reorganization indicated by the lower-right quadrant of the figure whereas the upper-left quadrant indicates the organizing principles andstructure of the traditional public sector.

This combined, two-dimensional conceptualization of NPM is general inperspective. In most countries the efforts to reorganize the institutionalstructure of the public sector have consisted in various combinations ofelements along both lines of reorganization, but the country-specific combi-nations can be identified by means of these two different NPM dimensions.In some countries reorganizations of the vertical axis type have been domin-

ating, in others the horizontal axis type has come to the fore. Thus, thecombination of NPM reorganizations that has characterized the develop-ment of the Anglo-American countries such as England, New Zealand andAustralia has been more of the market-oriented type than has been the casewith continental European countries. With the exception of England, theprocesses of European modernization have not become dominated by themarket-oriented type of reorganization (Olsen and Peters 1996; Kickert1997; Peters and Pierre 1998). However, this does not mean that the NPMconcept and principles have not caught on. In some continental European

and in the Scandinavian countries NPM has got rather a strong footholdas well, but here the managerial dimension of NPM has become the domi-nant one.

During the last fifteen to twenty years of Danish modernization theefforts have predominantly been of the horizontal axis type, encompassingvarious managerial restructurings of the public sector, whereas the vertical,market-oriented type has been, if not absent, then rather insignificant.

The comparative unimportance of the market-oriented NPM dimension

in Denmark and in the other Scandinavian countries is sometimes inter-preted as an indication of a more reluctant and moderate NPM develop-ment (Dunleavy 1997). Rather than talking about more or less NPM onecan, according to the two-dimensional concept of NPM outlined in figure 1,talk about different types of NPM reorganization and about the Scandinav-ian development as a development dominated by the managerial NPM



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dimension, giving less importance to the market-oriented dimension(Christensen and Lgreid 1998; Klausen and Stahlberg 1998).

Especially at the local government level of Denmark, market and meso-market ideas have not caught on, and municipal efforts like privatization,

contracting out, free choice and competition are rare. Owing to financialrestraints, more municipalities have begun to consider and are attemptingto contract out services for the elderly and day-care for children. But upuntil now, such reorganization elements have been far from dominant.Besides the absence of market orientation, Danish restructuring at the locallevel has taken a path of its own, differing from the local governmentreorganizations of both Norway and Sweden. This specific path of munici-pal reorganization does not fit well into the more general NPM perspectiveoutlined by figure 1.

With the dominant horizontal, managerial kind of public reorganizationfrom figure 1 as a point of reference, Danish restructuring at the local levelof government since the late 1980s is illustrated in figure 2. In terms bor-rowed from British local government literature (Stewart and Stoker 1995;Stoker 2000; Rhodes 1998, 2000), reorganization of Danish municipalitiescan be described as a restructuring from local government towards localgovernance.

This line of reorganization covers a structural change from one formaland authoritative centre of public decision and policy making at the locallevel (government) towards a multitude of more or less autonomous enti-ties, public as well as private institutions, associations and actors, net-working within their respective domains of policy making (governance).The traditional, vertical relations of local government from above are beingsupplemented and, to some extent, replaced by more horizontal relationsand interaction between the many centres and entities of local governance.In the literature, the concept of governance is often mixed up with theNPM concept. Despite their interconnectedness, governance is, however,

distinguishable from NPM, stressing interaction and co-operation betweenthe many interdependent entities and actors of local policy making (Petersand Pierre 1998).

In Denmark this multi-centring of local government is taking place byway of delegation and decentralization of more or less delimited decisionmaking competence and responsibility from the central local government,i.e. the elected local council and council committees, to the different produc-ing and service-delivering institutions and their users, to voluntary associ-ations and groups of citizens, setting the status of self-governing entities

within their respective domains of local policy making.In the British context the new multi-centring and governance-orientationof the traditional structure of local government goes hand in hand with alimitation of authority for municipalities as political institutions of localself-government. By means of central state regulations, local authoritieshave been deprived of tasks and competence in favour of various private



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agencies (Stewart and Stoker 1995). This has not been the case in Denmark.On the contrary, as part of the modernization programmes, municipalitieshave been granted new tasks as well as increased decision-making com-petence regarding organization and management of public tasks and ser-

vices (Hansen 1997). Thus, in the Danish case, we can speak of a two-folddecentralization from the central state to the local government level, as wellas from local government to a multitude of more or less self-governingentities, networking together and with municipal authorities. To a largedegree, local councils have, themselves, renounced their increased munici-pal competence within the various areas of service provision and taskfulfilment in favour of decentralized self- and user-governance.

This kind of multi-centred self- and user-governance along the verticalline of reorganization is combined with a horizontal line covering a with-

drawal of detailed regulation from above in favour of superior goal steeringand economic frame regulation, giving new and increased latitude to theself-governing institutions and units.

The dominant profile in Danish NPM restructuring at the local levelof government can be described as a combination of these two lines ofrestructuring. It is illustrated by the lower-right quadrant of figure 2,whereas the upper-left quadrant describes the traditional structure ofgovernment at the local level.

As a result of these local restructurings, a new and combined model ofgoverning is taking shape at the local level. This model can be illustrated

FIGURE 2 Organizational principles of Danish restructuring at the local level



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in the simplified and ideal-typical figure 3. The new model of governingtaking shape at the local level in Denmark consists of three main elements:

Decentral self-governance:

Decision-making competence and responsibility are being delegated to vari-ous administrative and service-delivering institutions and units, such asnurseries and schools, homes for the elderly, youth centres, etc. Decentral-ized institutions are becoming more or less self-governing, taking over com-petence and responsibility for their own finances and production. Thescope and degree of self-governance may vary from one field to another, aswell as in and between different municipalities; just as private associations,organizations and groups of citizens may be attributed various degrees ofcompetence and responsibility within demarcated domains of local govern-

ance.User participation:The self-governing competence of public institutions and units is carriedout in co-operation with users of public services. Users are given new rightsof participation as well as decision-making competence through electeduser councils and user boards that function as governing bodies of the insti-tutions. Besides these formalized channels of participation, users haveinfluence through more informal channels of participation and through usersurveys at the decentralized as well as at the central municipal level.

Central goal steering and economic frame regulation:Decentralization delegates many detailed matters, traditionally assigned toelected local councils, to the various administrative and service-deliveringinstitutions. Simultaneously, detailed regulations from above are beingrevoked in favour of broad goals and economic frames determined by thecentral, elected council. In various degrees of formalization, central goal

FIGURE 3 Combined governing model at the local level



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steering by local councils is carried out in co-operation with the self-govern-ing institutions and their users by way of procedures and forums of dia-logue. This economic frame and political goal steering by elected local coun-cils belongs to the realm of local self-government. The municipalities are,

however, not autonomous entities of local government. They interact andnegotiate with the central state government about overall public financesand services, and municipal decisions regarding goals and economic framesmust comply with negotiated agreements and obey national laws and thesocial rights of citizens indicated by the dotted lines in figure 3.

This combined model of governing recurs in various versions in manyDanish municipalities where the model has been implemented to variousdegrees since the end of the 1980s. Decentralization of the service-delivering institutions is the most prevalent element of Danish local govern-

ment reorganization and has been introduced in most municipalities. Userparticipation through formal user boards is instituted for primary schools,day-care and services for the elderly. Besides these forms of user partici-pation, other and less formalized types of user participation and influenceare common in a wide range of service areas. Goal steering, embracing arange of municipal tasks and services, has been introduced in about halfof the Danish municipalities (Sehested et al. 1992; Andersen 1996; Ejersbo1997; Klausen and Stahlberg 1998).

A specific Danish NPM-model has taken shape at the local governmentlevel; a model that entails a range of clear NPM-oriented and inspiredelements, but that deviates from the more general NPM discourse on sev-eral points. The market-like elements of NPM are only modestly integratedin the model, and the managerial elements are combined in a specific way,stressing decentralized self- and user-governance within central goalsand frames.

This specific variant of NPM at the local government level in Denmarkalso deviates from the kind of NPM-inspired restructuring and new models

of local government that have been instituted in Swedish and Norwegianmunicipalities since the 1980s (Hansen 1999).Compared to the Swedish local government restructuring, the weak inte-

gration of market-oriented restructuring comes to the fore. Although themarket-oriented NPM dimension has not been dominating in Sweden,elements of contracting out, purchaser-provider models, and voucher sys-tems have been introduced in a number of municipalities (Wise and Amna1993; Montin 1990,1993,1997; Klausen and Stahlberg 1998). In addition, theSwedish restructurings do not contain the same characteristics of decentral-

ized self- and user-governance.This goes for the Norwegian restructurings too. Besides the little weightgiven to decentralized self- and user-governance, Norwegian local govern-ment restructurings have been less inspired by NPM ideas than has beenthe case in Denmark and Sweden. The Norwegian local governmentrestructurings are more traditional public administration-oriented, stress-



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ing municipalities as local implementation agencies of the central welfarestate (Baldersheim et al. 1997; Vabo and Opedal 1997; Vabo 1998). As aresult of the modernizing restructurings, the so-called Scandinavian modelof local government seems to have become less unitary, being restructured

in somewhat different directions.In Denmark, management-oriented NPM reorganizations have caught on

at the local level, but not in a pure managerial version. The managerialideas and elements have been mixed with historically developed traditionsand institutionalized norms and forms of rather open government at thelocal level, giving opportunities of participation and influence to localassociations and groups of citizens and users of public services (Gundelachand Torpe 1999). Thus, diverse forms of consultation and participation wereinstituted as part of the local government reforms during the 1970s. The

NPM discourse has been articulated and interpreted within the existinginstitutional reality of Danish local government, and the managerial rec-ommendations have been translated into that reality. On the other hand,this reality has been restructured and given form and colour by the NPMdiscourse, attaining a specific NPM profile characterized by the combinedmodel of decentralized self- and user-governance and central goal andframe steering.

NEW GOVERNING ROLES AT THE LOCAL LEVEL

The specific Danish NPM model at the local level of government institutesa range of new governing roles for the different actors in local politics andpolicy making:

Citizens are being instituted as users of public services. As users, citi-zens have new specified rights to participate and influence the variousservice-delivering institutions and municipal sectors. They are givenformalized voice opportunities and competence as specially concernedparticipants in the local decision- and policy-making processes.

Professionals and employees of municipal institutions and administrativeunits have obtained more competence and responsibility as producersof public services. This competence and responsibility are exercised inaccordance with the users of the services by way of new formal andinformal procedures of dialogue and co-operation. Thus, the formaluser boards consist of elected user and employee representatives.

Headsof various municipal institutions and units are attributed a newand enhanced role as leaders and managers with more authority andresponsibility internally in regard to their own institution, as well as

externally in regard to leadership and management of the municipalityas a whole. Central administrative staffof the municipality are turning into consult-

ants in relation to the decentralized, self-governing institutions andproducing units which they service within their respective realm ofadministrative capacity.



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Administrative chiefshave been assigned a new role of municipal leader-ship and management asdirectors functioning as a forum of strategicleadership and as advisers and sparring partners in relation to the pol-itically elected council and the mayor. At the central level of municipal

administration and management, these new roles are often institutedin combination with an abolition of the sector-oriented divisions anddepartments of the traditional administrative structure in favour ofmore cross-cutting and comprehensive units of service adminis-tration.

Finally,local councillorshave been attributed a new role as general goal-steering decision-makers, formulating and deciding overall goals and spe-cific objects as well as the financial frames of the municipality. Thisnew goal-steering role of the councillors is commonly combined with

more or less formalized and developed procedures of dialoguebetween the local council and different self-governing institutions andtheir user boards. And often, the traditional standing sector committeesof the local council are abolished and restructured in favour of fewer,more comprehensive committees in order to make the local councilfunction as a unified political forum.

According to the common perception and discourse of the new modelof local government, these sets of roles and relations will make local

government both moreeffective, moreresponsive and moredemocratic. Moreand better services will be delivered for the money. The different needsand preferences of the local citizens and users will come into focus. Localgovernment will be strengthened and democratized from below by thedevelopment of new forms of participatory democracy for users of publicservices and from above by a strengthening of local councillors as crucialgoal-steering decision and policy makers.

As such a promising form of government, this NPM-inspired model andset of governing roles have been propagated by a host of municipal organi-

zation experts and consultants during the past decade of public and localgovernment modernization. No wonder the new governing model androles have caught on and that municipalities have sought to institute themin various versions and to various degrees.

Whether the new governing model at the local level will have the prom-ised effects in efficiency and democracy from below will not be discussedfurther here. The focus turns to the new leadership role for local councillorsthat is being instituted as part of this NPM-inspired restructuring of localgovernment.

THE NPM ROLE OF LOCAL COUNCILLORS

Generally, the new leadership role of goal steering is seen as strengtheningelected councillors as primary political decision and policy makers in localgovernment, and thus strengthening political democracy at the local level.

The alleged strengthening of local councillors is based on a new NPM



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distinction between political and administrative decision making and ona separation of the roles of elected politicians and public administratorsand service providers. Politics and political decision making are seen, onthe one hand, as the making of overall goals and objects for the general

development and the various public services and tasks of the municipality.On the other hand, administration and administrative decision makingare seen as operational management and running of concrete service pro-vision and task performance in accordance with the political goals of theelected councillors.

According to the NPM discourse, these two kinds of political andadministrative decision making and roles must not be mixed. Politiciansmust not interfere with the detailed matters of service delivery and taskperformance, giving the administrative and professional staffs and units of

the municipality increased competence and latitude to do what they aregood at, namely manage and operate task performance and service deliv-ery. Delegating management and operational competence to the variousservice-delivering institutions and task-performing entities will simul-taneously give the elected politicians more time and opportunities to dowhat they are good at and elected to do, namely make politics and policy.

This new distinction and separation of politics and administration hasreally resonated at the local government level.

Historically and constitutionally, such a distinction and separation ofpolitical vs. administrative competence and decision making has not beeninstituted as part of the local government structure. Contrary to the consti-tutional separation between political and executive authority at the centralstate level, the local council has as an elected assembly of representativesand ombudsmen of the local citizens been granted complete political aswell as administrative competence and responsibility to handle local affairs.Since the local government reform of 1970, which entailed a new statutefor municipalities, this competence has been implemented by a number of

standing council committees, in charge of the immediate administrationand management of their respective fields and realms of municipal auth-ority. Increasingly, executive and administrative competence has been del-egated to professional staffs and units. Decisions in concrete cases anddetailed matters have, however, remained a significant share of the workof elected councils and standing committees. Because of the growing num-

ber of public tasks and services allocated to municipalities during the wel-fare state expansion of the 1970s and the new wave of modernizing decent-ralization from central state to local government in the 1980s (Hansen 1997),

local councillors became ever more buried in detailed matters and concretecase work throughout the 1980s which encouraged increasing sector spe-cialization by elected councillors.

This combination of overload by detailed matters and increasing sectororientation attracted growing criticism of local councillors, who wereaccused of playing case workers and administrators, leaving important



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political issues to professional administrators who were in turn, accused ofplaying politicians.

Against this background, the NPM discourse about what is political andwhat is not, as well as the propagated new role of councillors as goal-

steering policy and decision makers, elicited a positive response in themunicipal world. The new separation of politics and administration becamea sesame and an answer to the problematic state of local governmentaffairs with its unclear mixing of roles, growing overload of detailed mat-ters and increasing sector specialization by local councillors.

However, efforts to institute a new goal-steering role for local councillorshave been far from successful. Generally, local councillors have experiencedmany difficulties in their attempts to adapt to the recommended role ofgoal-steering. But sooner or later, we will be able to handle it and get a

better grasp on political goal steering. We just arent used to it and haventlearned it yet, the councillors console themselves and each other in theface of accusations of falling back on and continuing their involvement inconcrete, detailed matters of municipal administration and management.

The question is whether the difficulties experienced by local councillorsare just a matter of getting used to and learning their new role of generalgoal-steering political leadership. Two sets of problems may be raised inconnection with this new role:

the role of goal-steering decision making does not fit well into thereality of democratic politics and public decision making at the locallevel.

the new leadership role of local councillors does not match the demo-cratic challenges of a local governance structure.

These two sets of problems will be discussed below.

GOAL STEERING AND DEMOCRATIC POLITICS AND DECISION-

MAKING AT THE LOCAL LEVEL

From one perspective, municipalities may be seen as service-delivering enti-ties that are and may be governed from above by objects and goals whichfunction as guiding principles for the management and delivery of services

by different producing municipal units. This is the perspective of the NPM-oriented reforms of local government. The municipalities are, however, alsodemocratic political institutions, organizing public and common concernsof the citizens of the municipality. This perspective is absent or neglected

in the NPM discourse.Concurrently, local councillors are more than goal- and decision-makingleaders of various service-delivering institutions. They are elected represen-tatives of the plurality of opinions and interests of the citizens as regardsthe common concerns and affairs of the municipality. Making the pluralityof voices, opinions and interests heard, making them agree and compro-



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mise in public deliberation and decision making may be seen as the bottom-line of democratic politics and policy making.

From this democratic and political perspective, the distinguishing dimen-sion of the role of elected councillors is to be able to comprehend a subject

matter from different points of view, to consider them, to compromise con-flicting interests and judge what is most reasonable and appropriate in agiven situation. And this is what local councillors learn in practical politicallife and what they are trying to do well in local political decision making.

This genuine political and democratic dimension of the role and skills ofelected councillors is not easily combined with the propagated role of goal-steering. First, when public decision and policy making takes the form andcharacter of setting overall goals for the development of the various tasksand services in the municipality, politics and policy making are raised to

a level above the many different opinions and conflicting interests of themunicipality. As a rule, different opinions and interests are not articulatedand confronted at the level of overall goals and objects. At this abstractlevel, agreement is often easily arrived at and the need to listen to, arguewith and reconcile the many different points of view and interests is notat stake. So the particular and distinguishing political skills of the localcouncillors are difficult to bring out and develop in the determination ofoverall goals for municipal service delivery and task performance. Second,as a result of the NPM separation of politics and administration, local coun-cillors lose touch with real life in the task-performing and service-deliveringmunicipal institutions and with the different opinions and interests mani-fested at this decentralized and concrete level of local government. Theyare dealt with by the self-governing administrative institutions and theirusers, and are of no concern to the central political level of the local counciland the councillors.

Although the reorganized municipalities have instituted more or less for-malized procedures of dialogue between the central, goal-steering level of

the local council and the decentralized level of the self-governing insti-tutions and user boards, the contact between these two levels of localgovernment has faded, both from the point of view of the local councillorsand of the service-delivering institutions and their users.

With the delegation of self-governing competence and responsibility tothe service institutions, they have become their own masters within theoverall goals and frames decided upon by the local council. The flipside is

being left alone at home. The same might be said for local councils andcouncillors as central goal and decision makers. Because of weak contact

and missing information and knowledge about what is going on at insti-tution and user level, it becomes difficult for local councillors to relate theirgoal-steering efforts to the real-life problems of institutions and users.

Goal making and steering by local councils and councillors can easilybecome irrelevant to and out of touch with what is going on out there, inservice-delivering institutions, among users of various services and among



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citizens in general. Thus, many local councillors see their goal-steeringefforts as more or less meaningless and many have become pessimisticabout their promising new leadership role as goal-steering decision makers.But we just have to learn how to do it and get better, the optimists say.

Maybe they will get better, but so far, the new role has apparently notstrengthened local councillors as primary political decision makers. Instead,local councillors have, as goal-steering decision makers, become morelonely and invisible in local political life. They seem to be passive

bystanders, while local politics and policy making goes on anywhere butat the level of central goal steering of local councils and councillors.

So local councillors are searching high and low for new ways that mayrevitalize their role as important political actors and decision makers inlocal government. They have no intention of returning to the traditional

role as case workers, preoccupied with and getting buried in detailed mat-ters of service delivery and task performance. Returning to the good olddays is not seen as any solution to the problems of losing touch with realityin local politics and decision making.

Municipalities and local councillors invest much talent in various effortsto make the new role of goal making and steering more politically meaning-ful and important in relation to real-life problems in local politics and policymaking. Attempts are being made to concretize and operationalize the over-all goals, making goal decisions by the local council more intervening andsteering for concrete services and outcomes of institutions. Often, this isrecommended to local councillors as the way to make their goal-steeringrole more relevant and important.

Other attempts are being made to improve the contact between the cen-tral level of the local council and the real-life problems of different serviceinstitutions, users and citizens in general. Information and dialogue pro-cedures are being elaborated and remedied in order to render the localcouncillors more visible and more aware of what is going on.

Generally, such efforts to make the goal-steering role of local councillorsmore politically important and meaningful are in line with a government-oriented perspective. A search is on for new ways and means to bringelected councillors back on stage and to the centre of local decision andpolicy making. Instituting the NPM concept of a goal-steering political lead-ership role has turned out to be problematic in regard to the promisedstrengthening of local councillors as political leaders and that is what localcouncillors are searching for, i.e. new ways and means to reinvent govern-ment and get back in to the centre of local policy making without

returning to the traditional institutional structure and roles of local govern-ment.The big question is, however, whether such efforts of reinventing

government are what is needed to meet the new challenges of politicaldemocracy and decision making at the local level. This question will bediscussed in the following and last section of the article, including some



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tentative arguments for another new role for elected councillors onewhich may be called a new governance role.

THE NEW CHALLENGES OF DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE AT

THE LOCAL LEVELAs illustrated in figure 2, the modernizing reorganizations since the late1980s have changed the traditional structure of local government towardsan emerging new structure of local governance. The formal-constitutionalcentre of political authority and decision making has been reorganized intoor supplemented with a decentralized and multi-centred structure ofgovernance, consisting of a range of more or less self-governing institutionsand entities, being in charge of their own affairs.

No doubt, this kind of reorganization has come to stay. The different

service-delivering institutions have no intention of giving up their self-gov-erning competence and responsibility. Neither have the users; nor the localcouncillors. The new institutional forms of local self- and user-governancefrom below can hardly be rolled back to the traditional form of localgovernment from above. Even if local political opinion and wills shouldchange in favour of a recentralization of the delegated competence andresponsibility, local political decision making has become too complex anaffair to be handled by one centre of authority, governing from above on

behalf of the citizens of the municipality.If public decision and policy making are no longer within the solitary

sphere of one centre of local authority and not to be controlled from aboveby the local council and the elected councillors, this new fact of decentringand multicentrism of local decision and policy making must be recognizedand taken into account. The democratic challenge is to make and how tomake the plurality of decision-making entities on different levels andfields of competence accountable, not only to their own but to the commonconcerns of the municipality. In order to meet this challenge two things

seem important.First, and contrary to the NPM discourse and demarcation of what ispolitical and what is not, the various self-governing entities, institutionsand users must be recognized as political and governing entities and actorsalong with the elected councillors. They should be seen and accepted asmore than just administrative and managerial. Local government anddecision making must be recognized as and take institutional form andcharacter of local co-governance between the elected councillors and themany other units and actors of local governance. To comprehend a subject

matter from different points of view, to take these into account and to makejudgements in regard to a reasonable and fair course of action must alsobecome a concern and skill of the many governing entities and actors ofthe municipality. The specific political skills of the elected representativesmust be learned by and become a skill of all actors and participants in localgovernance. Authoritative public decision and policy making cannot be left



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to the local council and to the elected councillors as the one and only gov-erning body, in charge of and accountable for the common and public con-cerns of the municipality. This is what the NPM discourse and the conceptof a new political role of goal-steering leadership is advocating, disre-

garding the genuine political and democratic dimension of public decisionmaking as well as the emerging new fact of a de-centred structure of polit-ical decision making and governance.

Second, elected councillors need a new governance role. Instead of beingstrengthened as central political leaders and decision makers, governingfrom above, elected councillors must become participant co-governors, con-tributing to public-oriented interactions between the many institutions andactors in local governance. The traditional vertical political relations andinteractions from above and below between elected councillors and voting

citizens must be supplemented with lateral relations and interactionsamong institutions, professionals and users, who become politically inte-grated into, and made publicly accountable for, the common and publicconcerns of the municipality and the citizenry.

Without such political integration of the decentralized institutions andusers, and without development of a public structure of co-governance

between local councillors and the many self-governing institutions andunits, there is a risk of growing fragmentation and exclusivity, which isinherent in the local structure of self- and user-governance, as well as ofincreasing marginalization of elected councillors who will be decoupledfrom the political problems and opinions out there among the decentredentities and actors in the local governance structure.

This new governance role for local councillors emphasizes other roledimensions than the ones that are being stressed by the NPM discourseand the concept of political leadership from above.

In a local governance structure local councillors have as elected rep-resentatives of the citizens to become guardians of the all-embracing, pub-

lic concerns of the municipality, ensuring that the plurality of opinions andinterests have voice opportunities and that no one is excluded from the de-centred processes of public opinion and decision making. No other bodyor institution than the elected council can fulfil such a guardian role, andaccepting this role has become ever more important because of the inherenttendency towards particular and exclusive self- and user-interests in a localgovernance structure.

To be guardians of public concerns and the plurality of opinions andinterests in local governance is, to some extent, more a matter of procedure

than of substance. Thus, an important dimension of the new governancerole of the councillors is one of organizing and staging public decision andpolicy making at the different levels and fields of local governance, ensur-ing a public deliberation in and between the many decision-making entitiesand actors.

As regards the substance and subject matter of local governance and



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122 KARIN HANSEN

decision making, local councillors must rather become active participantsin processes of public opinion and political will making than importantgoal and decision makers. Besides making central decisions about budgetsand economic frames of the municipality as well as other public decisions

that may not be delegated to decentralized self- and user-governance, coun-cillors must participate and engage in public deliberations about commonconcerns of the municipality, ensuring that all citizens get an opportunityto voice their opinions and interests, and that the plurality of voices areconsidered on various levels and fields of local decision and policy making.

These governance dimensions of the role of local councillors are absentfrom or neglected in the NPM concept of political leadership and are notmet by the various efforts to strengthen and reinvent government. Todevelop and institute such a new role for local councillors, combininggovernment and governance in an institutional structure of local co-governance, is one of the big challenges to the emerging new structure ofgovernance at the local level.

CONCLUSION

In the case of Denmark, the specific NPM reorganizations of local govern-ment have restructured local government towards a more de-centred struc-

ture of local governance, characterized by increased self- and user-govern-ance for various municipal service institutions and task-performing unitsand organizations. Rather than strengthening elected councillors as centraland crucial goal-steering leaders, as advocated by the NPM discourse andaimed at by the various efforts to reinvent government, this restructuringcalls for a new kind of governance role for local councillors.

In order to meet the problems of self-governing fragmentation and exclu-sivity inherent in a de- and multi-centred local governance structure, theinstitutional structures of government and governance must be combined

into a new structure of local co-governance giving the elected council andcouncillors a role as co-governors and guardians of the all-embracing, pub-lic concerns and the plurality of interests and opinions in municipalities.Local councils and councillors cannot be the only governing body in chargeof and accountable for the public and common concerns of the municipality.As elected representatives, the councillors are, however, the only body thatcan fill a role as guardians of common and public concerns and voiceopportunities of all opinions and interests.

This guardian role has become more important than ever for ensuringand developing a democratic form of governance at the local level.How to develop a new combined structure of local co-governance and

how to institute a new governance role for elected councillors seem to havebecome some of the great challenges implied by the ongoing NPM-orientedrestructurings at the local government level.



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Between Local Government and Local Governance

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