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While steps are taken to increase women's representation in politics, it can often prove difficult to change patterns of recruitment and nomination to political positions. This article argues that not only formal regulation, but also informal institutions, like local norms, beliefs and values, history and traditional codes of conduct matter and should be taken into account in plans to achieve balanced gender representation. The article compares recruitment policies in rural municipalities in Norway. Case studies were conducted to identify factors affecting women's willingness to stand as candidates, the factors local political parties take into account when nominating candidates, and voting behaviour. The study suggests that local issues, such as religious traditions, distributional conflicts and desire for community representation, affect women representation. Representation policies in local governments are, in other words, not only affected by rules and values "from above", they must also be understood in a "bottom up" perspective, as the aggregated consequences of the rational behaviour of voters. Adapted from the source document.

This article concerns how the municipal organisation and its leaders respond to challenges posed by the post-industrial era, in the form of shrinking employment opportunities and population decline. By developing distinct policies of supporting cultural and new economic initiatives, they depart from traditional steering modes and engage in 'networked governance' to safeguard community viability. This extends the scope of what we normally expect of local government, as it implies practices and de facto decision making outside the public realm. With these strategies, municipal leaders show that they are eager to do something for the people in the municipality. Their relative success in the use of governance methods might be regarded as new ways of legitimising the politicians' and the municipalities' role. In this respect, creating policies that relate to the formation of community identity may be an important asset. Adapted from the source document.

As prefectoral systems are generally regarded to be systems that underpin and serve as the basis for centralization, this article examines how they have developed and how they work, and why they are still considered necessary in decentralized Scandinavia. The article finds that the prefect's authority towards the municipalities varies in Scandinavia. The Norwegian and Swedish prefectures hold rather powerful roles, while the Danish ones do not. The article suggests that this may have something to do with the need for an institution that brings about cohesion and coordination. Prefectoral systems are basically pragmatic solutions to the problem of enforcing national standards and common values across regions and municipalities, but their role may vary with institutional conditions created by local government reforms. The article further suggests that the authority of the prefecture varies with the character of central-local relations, and that it is vulnerable to changes in dominant political goals and values. en. References. Adapted from the source document.

Facilitative leadership has long been a catchword in studies of mayoral leadership. Emphasizing cooperation, consensus- building and the empowerment of others, the facilitative model is said to be typical of council-manager systems of local government. Drawing on a study of long-serving mayors in Norway, this article assesses the accuracy of the facilitative approach in a typical council-manager system. What does it entail as an ideal type and to what extent does it catch the essence of mayoral leadership as practiced in Norwegian local government? The authors argue that there are conspicuous and interesting examples of Norwegian mayors exercising strong, strategic, and visionary leadership within a facilitative frame, and that the facilitative model does not preclude a broader and more 'expansive' and 'entrepreneurial' approach to mayoral leadership. Adapted from the source document.

There is currently a need to analyse and measure the democratic accountability of governance networks. This kind of analysis and measurement calls for the development of an interactive conceptualisation of democratic accountability that makes it possible to measure the level of democratic accountability of concrete governance networks with reference to the extent to which they interact with (1) relevant politicians appointed through the institutions of representative democracy, (2) the relevant and affected stakeholders, and (3) the wider citizenry. A case study of two governance networks involved in two Nordic megaprojects illustrates how this measurement device can be brought into use and what the insights are that can be gained from it. Adapted from the source document.