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Market‐based public management reform has introduced customer choice among competing providers of public services. Choice entails exit, an option which Albert Hirschman famously reserved for the market, while voice is the key mode of communication in political life. Based on elite and mass surveys, the article studies how exit is perceived by citizens and local political and administrative leaders in Norway and Sweden, and how the two strategic options relate to each other. Citizens are more positive towards customer choice and exit than are leaders, albeit with some variation across different public service sectors. Political and administrative leaders are positive towards customer choice models as a strategy to empower clients but more critical in terms of the potential loss of accountability and control that contracting out services may entail.

"The premise of Elected Officials and Political Leaders is that every elected politician is a political leader. This anthology looks at political leadership in Norwegian local governments and explores how to understand this form of leadership. Passing resolutions is an important part of an elected official's job, and public discourse can suggest that such work is itself the essence of political leadership. This is a central concern in the book, which argues that political leadership also consists of grasping and understanding issues, setting agendas, proposing solutions and mobilizing support for them.

With this broad view of political leadership, the book is organized around four paradoxes associated with the political-administrative system in Norwegian municipal government: the conflict paradox, the administration paradox, the transparency paradox and the democracy paradox. The chapters describe and discuss these paradoxes, the tensions they are based on and how opposing interests can be balanced in a constructive way, both for the local public sector as a whole as well as the individual councils and councilors.

The book provides examples of how elected leaders can strengthen their political leadership, not least through a systematic comparison with Danish municipal governments. Important points in each chapter are also emphasized in interviews with political and administrative leaders who share their experiences with the authors. The book concludes with a discussion of how political leadership can be further developed and strengthened, both through changes in the institutional framework for Norwegian local governments and through dialogue and reflection within the individual municipal councils." - "Folkevalgt og politisk leder tar utgangspunkt i at enhver folkevalgt politiker er en politisk leder. Boken handler om politisk lederskap i norske kommuner, og den diskuterer hvordan vi kan forstå denne formen for lederskap. Å fatte beslutninger er en viktig del av folkevalgtes hverdag, og den offentlige debatten kan gi inntrykk av at dette er selve essensen i det politiske lederskapet. Boken problematiserer dette, og den argumenterer for at politisk lederskap også handler om å fange opp og forstå problemer, sette dagsorden, foreslå løsninger og skape oppslutning om disse.

Med dette brede perspektivet på politisk lederskap er boken organisert rundt fire paradokser knyttet til det politisk-administrative systemet i norske kommuner: konfliktparadokset, administrasjonsparadokset, åpenhetsparadokset og demokratiparadokset. I bokens kapitler diskuteres innholdet i disse paradoksene, hvilke spenninger som ligger til grunn for dem, og hvordan motstridende hensyn kan balanseres på en konstruktiv måte, både for norsk kommunesektor som helhet, for det enkelte kommunestyret og for den enkelte folkevalgte.

Boken gir eksempler på hvordan folkevalgte kan styrke sitt politiske lederskap, ikke minst basert på bokens systematiske sammenlikninger med danske kommuner. Viktige poeng i hvert kapittel blir også understreket i intervjuer med en kommunepolitiker eller en kommunedirektør som deler sine erfaringer med oss. Boken avsluttes med en diskusjon av hvordan det politiske lederskapet kan utvikles og styrkes, både gjennom endringer i rammebetingelsene for norske kommuner og gjennom diskusjoner og refleksjoner i det enkelte kommunestyret."

Abstract
Increasingly confronted with the acute risk of large-scale disaster, local governments across the globe are searching for effective and efficient strategies for scaling their disaster response capacity. Emergency management research has examined such strategies in various urban settings, but still suffers from the lack of proper theoretical frameworks for studying how institutionalized modes of governance condition local scalability in different national contexts. Building on the research tradition of urban governance, this article develops a conceptual framework for conducting institutional analysis of overarching values, norms and practices that shape the local scaling of disaster response capacity. It demonstrates the analytical value of the framework by applying it in an illustrative case study of disaster response systems in the three Scandinavian countries of Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. The framework proves useful for systematizing and discussing nuances within and across institutional contexts.

Classic literature on size and democracy argues that there is a trade-off between opportunities for broad citizen participation and communities' ability to deal effectively with the challenges faced by their locality. Consequently, smaller political units enrich democracy, while larger units strengthen the capacity to govern. We argue that although the trade-off may be relevant within a framework concentrating on representative democratic institutions, the trade-off is questionable in the light of more recent contributions on democratic, network-based governance. The article develops this argument, and suggests elements that should be included in a revised theory of municipal size.

This article maps how the sub-national regional levels of governance in Denmark, Norway and Sweden have changed from a high degree of institutional convergence to a pattern of institutional divergence. It analyses the similarities and differences in the changes in regional governance and discusses how these changes can be understood. Our supposition is that the more or less rational explanations of change found in main strands of the new institutionalism fail to explain the recent reforms of regional governance. Consequently, we ourselves have to contend with explanations in which rational action plays a limited role and contingent articulations of political and institutional conditions, together with spillover effects from reforms of local governance structures, are central to understanding the reforms that have produced the increasingly divergent patterns of regional governance in Scandinavia.

This article maps how the sub-national regional levels of governance in Denmark, Norway and Sweden have changed from a high degree of institutional convergence to a pattern of institutional divergence. It analyses the similarities and differences in the changes in regional governance and discusses how these changes can be understood. Our supposition is that the more or less rational explanations of change found in main strands of the new institutionalism fail to explain the recent reforms of regional governance. Consequently, we ourselves have to contend with explanations in which rational action plays a limited role and contingent articulations of political and institutional conditions, together with spillover effects from reforms of local governance structures, are central to understanding the reforms that have produced the increasingly divergent patterns of regional governance in Scandinavia. ; This article maps how the sub-national regional levels of governance in Denmark, Norway and Sweden have changed from a high degree of institutional convergence to a pattern of institutional divergence. It analyses the similarities and differences in the changes in regional governance and discusses how these changes can be understood. Our supposition is that the more or less rational explanations of change found in main strands of the new institutionalism fail to explain the recent reforms of regional governance. Consequently, we ourselves have to contend with explanations in which rational action plays a limited role and contingent articulations of political and institutional conditions, together with spillover effects from reforms of local governance structures, are central to understanding the reforms that have produced the increasingly divergent patterns of regional governance in Scandinavia.

Artikel 1This article maps how the sub-national regional levels of governance in Denmark, Norway and Sweden have changed from a high degree of institutional convergence to a pattern of institutional divergence. It analyses the similarities and differences in the changes in regional governance and discusses how these changes can be understood. Our supposition is that the more or less rational explanations of change found in main strands of the new institutionalism fail to explain the recent reforms of regional governance. Consequently, we ourselves have to contend with explanations in which rational action plays a limited role and contingent articulations of political and institutional conditions, together with spillover effects from reforms of local governance structures, are central to understanding the reforms that have produced the increasingly divergent patterns of regional governance in Scandinavia.

Trust is an essential part of a legitimate political system. Based on data collected among Norwegian citizens, this article investigates the effects on trust in local politicians by influence on versus satisfaction with local services. The theoretical base for the article is the two differing theories which argue that citizen either regard themselves as consumers or citizens of (local) government. The article argues that people, when evaluating trust towards local politics, tend to apply customer-oriented factors to a greater extent than citizen-oriented factors. However, we do not find support for a claim that customer- oriented factors have replaced citizen-oriented factors as such. Thus we argue that the two considerations appear to be complimentary rather than mutually exclusive.