Party Politics and the Common Good in Swedish Local Government

Abstract

Local government in Sweden is usually classified as the northwest European type of local government, together with the local government systems of the other Nordic countries and Britain. In the 1990s and the early years of the new millennium, Swedish local government has been especially susceptible to the ideas of ‘new public management’ (NPM). At the same time there has been a long‐ongoing trend of increasing party‐politicisation of local councils. In this paper a selection of five local authorities are examined in order to see how party politics and party‐politicisation are confronted by the new organisational doctrines. It is concluded that in this respect the doctrines guiding local government organisation can be characterised by three common traits: the legitimacy of particular interests is denied in favour of the common good of the locality; it is denied that conflict and competition between political parties perform any democratic function; finally, when it comes to the relation between politics and administration there is a common confession of the management‐by‐objectives doctrine. Somewhat surprisingly, these three principles guide organisation and politics not only in those authorities most enthusiastically adopting NPM but also in the authorities implementing organisational reforms based on more communitarian principles and even organisationally conservative municipalities not even considering any organisational change. One interpretation of this contradictory observation may be that NPM concepts and ideas have also found their way into local doctrines that are based on quite different principles. Another interpretation is that there is a consensus tradition in Swedish political culture that can also account for similar results in municipalities not explicitly introducing an apolitical organisation doctrine.

Walking the tightrope-perspectives on local politicians’ role in implementing a national social care policy on evidence-based practice

“…Thus, all three factors in Lundquist’s model affected the politicians’ decisions and actions. A common discussion within municipal systems is to what extent local politicians should steer service provision [16, 17]. In our study, many of the politicians stated that their task is to decide on what is to be done and social care professionals are to decide on how this aim is best reached.…”

“…The influence from non-political councils such as service users has also grown [16]. At the same time, social care organizations have been strongly influenced by new public management, including principles such as management-by-objectives (MBO) and the outsourcing of public services to private organizations, requiring a new way of steering from the administrative as well as the political leadership [17]. …”

Orientasi Ideologi dan Pragmatisme Politik Model Pembentukan Koalisi dalam Pilkada Serentak di Jawa Tengah 2015

“…Dalam konteks yang berbeda, pembahasan tentang pembentukan koalisi di tingkat lokal juga penting untuk memahami tentang pentingnya partai politik dalam pembentukan pemerintahan (Back, 2005;Laver, 1989). Artikel ini berargumen bahwa partai politik tingkat lokal memainkan peran penting dalam pembentukan koalisi dan kandidat seseorang untuk maju dalam Pilkada.…”

Hybrid Governance: The Case of Household Solid Waste Management in Sweden

“…Decisions tend also, in more areas than waste management, be taken on the basis of consensus rather than on campaigning. Sweden has introduced market features in public administration, but the idea of policy based on common interests is till dominant in local politics and public administration (Bäck 2003). In other words, the competitive model of organisation on administrative level is not reflected in the political level of local governments.…”