Party Politics and the Common Good in Swedish Local Government

In: Scandinavian political studies: SPS ; a journal, Band 26, Heft 2, S. 93-123

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 & GB. In the 1990s & 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-politicization of local councils. In this paper a selection of five local authorities are examined in order to see how party politics & party-politicization are confronted by the new organizational doctrines. It is concluded that in this respect the doctrines guiding local government organization can be characterized by three common traits: the legitimacy of particular interests is denied in favor of the common good of the locality; it is denied that conflict & competition between political parties perform any democratic function; finally, when it comes to the relation between politics & administration there is a common confession of the management-by-objectives doctrine. Somewhat surprisingly, these three principles guide organization & politics not only in those authorities most enthusiastically adopting NPM but also in the authorities implementing organizational reforms based on more communitarian principles & even organizationally conservative municipalities not even considering any organizational change. One interpretation of this contradictory observation may be that NPM concepts & 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 organization doctrine. 3 Tables, 66 References. Adapted from the source document.