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Political leadership and interactive governance in finnish local government context
This study investigates political leadership as embodiment of interactive governance in Finnish local government context. The article focuses on how local political leadership broadens along with adapting interactive governance ideas at local level. The empirical data consists of 15 interviews of the leading local politicians. Using abductive qualitative content analysis, it is possible to identify how interaction is intertwined throughout the whole political process. This intertwining emphasizes the meaning of interactive and networked dimension of political leadership. It is arguable, that instead of sovereign decision-maker role the focus of local political leadership is shifting towards enabling and utilizing interaction strategically and for boundary-spanning activities, which relates to more interactive governance of municipality.

The professional local elected official as integrative political leader
As increasing numbers of Finnish municipalities have introduced positions for full-time and part- time elected officials, the work of local political leaders has become professionalized. This article advances the understanding of the competence needs of professional local elected officials. The empirical data consist of interviews with local elected officials. The data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The results indicate that the professional local elected officials tend to work as integrative political leaders. These integrative political leaders work adaptively as they aim to advance collaboration between different actors. They need, for example, communication and interaction skills, self- leadership skills, political skills, knowledge management skills, and systemic understanding to be successful in their work.

Artikkelissa tarkastellaan kuntien luottamushenkilöiden kokemaa häirintää ja uhkailua: Millaista häirintää kuntien luottamushenkilöt kohtaavat ja millaisia vaikutuksia häirintäkokemuksilla on? Tutkimuksessa yhdistetään aineistoja aineistotriangulaation avulla. Aineistoina on käytetty haastatteluja ja kyselyä. Laadullisen, tätä tutkimusta varten kerätyn haastatteluaineiston analyysimenetelmänä käytetään narratiivisesti orientoitunutta sisällönanalyysia.
Häirintäilmiötä kehystetään teoreettisesti poliittisen kulttuurin ja kompleksisen hallinnan tarkastelujen avulla. Tutkimus osoittaa, että luottamushenkilöt kohtaavat erilaisia häirinnän muotoja. Myös häirinnän kanavia on useita. Luottamushenkilöiden kohtaaman häirinnän eri muotojen tunnistaminen on tärkeää, jotta häirintään voidaan puuttua.
Häirinnällä on monenlaisia vaikutuksia. Yhteiskunnallisella tasolla pulmia aiheuttaa ehdokasasettelun hankaloituminen. Demokratian kannalta on vakavaa, jos ihmiset eivät uskalla asettua ehdolle häirinnän pelossa tai luopuvat luottamushenkilöpaikastaan häirintää koettuaan. Etenkin kuntapäätöksenteossa ehdokkaiden moninaisuus ja keskinäinen erilaisuus on nähty arvona. Lisäksi häirintä vaikuttaa julkiseen keskusteluun. Joistain asioista ei haluta keskustella julkisesti häirinnän pelossa, mikä saattaa vinouttaa poliittista keskustelua. Riskinä on myös häirinnän normalisoituminen.

This article, based on narratives of experienced (born between 1945 and 1950) municipal chief executive officers, investigates changes that challenge leadership inlocal government. Four factors emerge: the dissolution of municipal boundaries; cooled relations between the State and municipalities; municipal inhabitants' changing role from participatory residents to exacting customers; and fragmentation oflocal politics. These four changes reveal the diversity of local leaders' everyday environment, illustrating and exploring how day-to-day management takes place in the intersection of more and more complex governance relations.

PurposeThis study observes the organisational environment of fostering citizen participation in the context of local government. Creating systems of influential citizen participation requires the consideration of organisational prerequisites. This study asks which organisational elements contribute to successful citizen participation in local government.Design/methodology/approachThe data consist of interviews with 14 key actors who work for the city of Helsinki. The interview content was subjected to abductive content analysis and reflected in the analytical framework based on previous literature on citizen participation. The analysis complements and adds insights to the existing literature.FindingsThis study illuminates three crucial elements of influential citizen participation: organisational structures, organisational culture and adequate resources. Additionally, the results revealed management to be a crucial enabling element. The findings highlight the importance of seeing citizen participation as an issue of governance and as a systemic part of the administration requiring intentional management efforts.Originality/valueThe study illustrates the key elements (structures, culture and resources) that should be considered when creating an influential citizen participation system. Additionally, the empirical analysis highlights the importance of management, which has been understudied in previous studies concerning citizen participation.

In this article, we explore the embedding of citizen participation in local government. Our study combines and synthesizes the focal aspects of two theoretical streams—citizen participation and interactive governance—in a novel way to identify, illustrate, and analyze the layers of governance required for citizen participation. The analysis shows how the institutional pervasiveness and holistic nature of citizen participation affects the strategic, executive, and citizen interface layers of governance and their interconnections. The research contributes to the literature on embedding citizen participation in government by emphasizing the need to address citizen participation as a profound question of governance and management.

Dimensions of leadership of professionalized local politicians in Finnish municipalities' administrative regulation documents
In recent years, Finnish municipalities have had a new political leader institution, professionalized local politicians. There is part- and fulltime working municipal council and municipal board chairpersons, paid chairpersons in municipal committees, mayors, and vice-mayors. In this article we study abductively municipal administrative regulation documents, by asking what kind of political leadership is being constructed within tasks and duties addressed for professionalized politicians. Research data consist of administrative regulation documents of all municipalities that have introduced part- and fulltime working elected politicians (N23). Results of abductive qualitative content analysis indicate that exclusivity seem to be highlighted to the detriment of extensiveness; collective leadership appear minor and scattered. Executive leadership is being greatly emphasized in exercising executive political leadership and leading political processes, and due to the adapting administrative tasks. Collaborative leadership is supported mainly with mayoral models.

Confidence lost – when municipal management drifts into crisis
The aim of this article is to understand complex managerial crises in Finnish municipalities. What kind of elements and characteristics lie behind managerial crises? The phenomenon of municipal management crisis is theoretically framed by complex management environment and interaction as well as latitude of managerial action. Our empirical qualitative data consist of 12 interviews (municipal managers and local political leaders). Narrative analysis is used as a research method. By combining different narratives, we constituted four type stories about leadership crises. Our findings strengthen previously identified reasons behind the crises and describe what reasons can be found behind of the narrowed latitude of managerial action. Our research reveals that the consequences of the crises are more widespread than assumed. The crises reflect the complexity of operational environment.

"A basic framework for pandemic governance existed, but was not followed" – expert views of agile governance and performance of the Finnish public health system during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020–2021
The aim is to examine how public health authorities acted, what kind of roles they adopted, and how the expected roles and actions appeared in relation to the legislative framework and national preparedness plans during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research is theoretically grounded in the concepts of agile and adaptive governance. Our empirical data consists of 53 qualitative interviews with public health actors at national, regional and local level collected from March 2021–February 2022. We analyzed interviews using directed content analysis. Major issues regarding the response of public health authorities included ambiguity, lack of knowledge in decision-making, and a mismatch between the locations of public health competence and public health authority.