Party Politics and the Common Good in Swedish Local Government

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.     

Local government reform in Jamaica and Trinidad: a policy dilemma

Issues of local governance have dominated Caribbean policy agenda for the past two decades, prompting considerable thought and action on local government reform by scholars, local government practitioners and policy makers, alike. No reforms have been as ubiquitous as those of local government. Permitted by an international reformist agenda, local government reform policy is linked positively to efforts to redress incapacities of public management and administration. This article examines conceptual and empirical issues relating to implementation of local government reform in two Caribbean countries, Jamaica and Trinidad. It analyses how the vision for local governance is articulated through specific reform taxonomies and argues that, although local government reform is normatively a policy aimed at fundamental changes in intergovernmental relations, in Jamaica and Trinidad reform has led merely to adjustments in the internal administration of local government. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An evaluation of the application of the new public management principles in the South African municipalities

New public management (NPM) was introduced in the western world with a sole purpose of reforming the public sector and its approaches in managing affairs of the state. These reforms were later adopted in some parts of the African continent including in the sub‐Saharan Africa trying to emulate the successes of the developed economies of the world. South Africa as one of the countries in Africa also sought to shift from its apartheid bureaucratic, inefficient and rule driven management of public affairs. To this end, the democratic South Africa aligned its constitutional provisions with the principles of NPM which include but are not limited to participatory planning, decentralisation, performance management, effectiveness and efficiency. These principles were introduced precisely to better manage the state and its resources including at the local sphere of government. Local government in South Africa is underpinned by its own sets of policy frameworks. This conceptual paper seeks to evaluate the application of NPM principles in the South African municipalities. The said evaluation was undertaken through a review of existing literature. The paper concludes that the application of the said principles in the South African municipalities is confronted by some challenges including lack of political will, corruption as well as lack of skills and capacities. Necessary recommendations have been developed to enhance the performance of municipalities so as to achieve the otherwise good intended provisions of the NPM.     

Management and change in northern Nigerian local government

This paper looks at some recent changes introduced by the Federal Government of Nigeria which seek a return to civilian rule in a stable polity. A first step in this policy has been completed with the election of chairmen and councillors at the local government level. The stated purpose of this initiative is to encourage ‘grass roots democracy’, which is expected to mobilize local action for urban and rural development. It is envisaged that local politicians and local administration will work together to this end. The paper concentrates on the consequences of the policy for the management of local government in Northern Nigeria, in which the predominant need is for rural development. The resource and management issues that arise for local government from the introduction of this polity are discussed under the following headings: finance, material resources, human resources and political relationships. The measures adopted appear radical, but have not led to a situation in which local government can easily predict what resources will be available to it. The question that is addressed is how, in an uncertain environment, local governments might use the powers and resources that are within their control to facilitate rural development in the Northern States. Suggestions are made as to what a management agenda should be and how this might be achieved through appropriate management systems and improved training.     

Strengthening Local Government Leadership and Performance: Reexamining and Updating the Winter Commission Goals

The Winter Commission report of 1993 stressed cities with the mayor‐council form of government and emphasized removing barriers to executive authority in large cities. In order to assess and update the report, it is important to recognize that a majority of cities with populations over 100,000 use the council‐manager form, in which restrictions on the executive and fragmented authority are unlikely to be present because of the constitutional principles on which the form is based. There has been progress toward improved leadership in both forms of government and substantial management change, including the incorporation of reinventing government and e‐government practices, and large counties are more likely to have an elected or appointed executive. An emerging issue not considered by the commission but in line with its purpose is the increasing challenge of governing expanding metropolitan and megapolitan regions.     

Leadership in Local Government Reform: Strategic Direction v Administrative Compliance

This paper reports on a survey across 26 Victorian local councils which assessed the impact of local government reform – boundary restructuring – compulsory competitive tendering, across-the-board rate cuts and rate capping, on the management and organisation of local government organisations in that state. It highlights the fact that leadership, planning and performance management is essential in responding to these reforms. It also reveals thatsome councils have been able to assist employees to make the shift to an outcomes-oriented deliverer of local services while others have made much less progress and are still focused on the traditional, compliance-oriented culture of local government administration.     

State,democracy, socialism: introduction

This paper argues that comtemporary developments in democratic politics mark the emergence of a new type of representative government. Current trends such as the weakening of party identification, the decline of political platforms or the increasing role of an élite of media experts may be regarded as undermining the principle of popular government. The paper demonstrates, however, that representative government was not invented as an indirect form of government by the people, but as a wholly original political system resting on principles different from those which organize democracy. Moreover, a number of institutional arrangements were established at the origins of representative government which have been virtually unquestioned since. Political representation has changed much less than is generally assumed. It is true, on the other hand, that the constant principles of representative government have had different consequences depending on the circumstance in which they were implemented. Such differences have generated various forms of political representation. The paper constructs three ideal-types of representative government. It shows that the current situation is best conceived as the rise of a new type of representation.     

Constitutional Tax and Expenditure Limitation in Colorado: The Impact on Municipal Governments

Tax and expenditure limitations (TELs) have become a pervasive influence on local government fiscal affairs. Explanations for the spread of TELs suggest that voters thought local government was growing more than needed. Thus, TELs were intended to constrain growth and reduce the size of local governments. This article's purpose was to determine the impact of two separate kinds of TELs, one a property tax measure, and the other a comprehensive revenue and expenditure limit, upon the growth of municipal governments in Colorado. Using a panel data set on municipal budgets (1975–1996), the article demonstrates three major points: 1) the effectiveness of a TEL in achieving reductions in local government revenue and spending growth depends upon the nature of the TEL; 2) the comprehensive TEL did effectively constrain growth and reduce local government reliance on the property tax, despite the local options for exemption; and 3) TELs do not have uniform impacts among governments of different population.     

Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and Federal Government Financial Reporting

This article considers the nature of generally accepted accounting principles and how well they match the purpose and activities of the federal government. A comparison of fundamental differences affecting accounting and reporting for private business and the federal government shows that although the generally accepted accounting principles do not work for the federal government, it does not follow that the federal government has nothing to gain from these principles.     

From Virtue to Competence: Changing the Principles of Public Service

Virtue has long been a central principle in the tradition of public service—to what extent is it still relevant today? Focusing on the role of the monitoring officer, a key official in the ethical framework of local government in the United Kingdom, this essay asks which virtues, if any, are still needed for public service and whether these virtues have been displaced by managerial notions of technical competence as the principles of public service delivery. The authors draw an initial distinction between virtue and competence that, upon further investigation, does not appear to be sustainable. Despite being drawn from two different academic perspectives—moral philosophy and management development—the concepts of virtue and competence are, in practice, very similar. This theoretical convergence is reflected in the practical concerns of monitoring officers and their perspective on public service ethics.     

Soft Governance, Hard Consequences: The Ambiguous Status of Unofficial Guidelines

Soft governance is an approach to policy implementation in which the central government relies less on hierarchy than on information to steer local organizations. This allows for a combination of formal accountability and professional autonomy that improves the quality of public services in both the short and the long term. Guidelines of an advisory, unofficial status are one tool that central government can use for this purpose. However, an inherent problem with this approach is that even though guidelines have no official legal status, in practice, they can take on the character of formal regulation when local organizations suspect that they cannot choose alternative courses of action, however well reasoned, without being sanctioned. It is a situation that encourages conformist behavior and diminishes the long-term potential for innovation. This phenomenon is illustrated with an analysis of disaster management in the Netherlands.     

FINANCIAL INDICATORS AND TRENDS FOR LOCAL GOVERNMENTS: A STATE-BASED POLICY PERSPECTIVE

Recent federal reports, the projected "new" federalism, research in financial and economic trends, and the emerging consensus concerning local government distress have highlighted the fact that no comprehensive or systematic federal, state, or local policies exist to deal with the problems that have been identified. The purpose of this article is to perform a statebased study of financial patterns and trends in local governments that have implications for state policy. Included in the analysis were correlations between constant dollar financial indicators and an instability index for four data points. The results of the analysis and trends suggest that certain consistent patterns which have implications for state policy exist.     

Public Sector Corporate Governance Disclosures: An Examination of Annual Reporting Practices in Queensland

In the public sector, corporate governance is an expression that is yet to be explicitly defined. This paper examines the existing public sector literature in order to derive a set of broad principles of corporate governance in the public sector. These principles are then applied through a content analysis of corporate governance disclosures in a group of government‐owned corporations, state government departments, local governments and statutory bodies. The results indicate the set of principles derived is generally applicable to various forms of public entities. However, due to a lack of an established public sector corporate governance framework, the disclosure of corporate governance is piecemeal. Government‐owned corporations achieved better disclosure practices in most principles than other public sector bodies. The paper aims to stimulate debate on public sector corporate governance and provides a basis for a more extensive survey on corporate governance disclosures.     

Urban local government finance in Zimbabwe: The case of Harare City Council

Since Zimbabwe won its independence in 1980, the country's leaders have embarked on an ambitious programme of decentralization and local government reform. At the same time, urban conditions in the country have become increasingly difficult. This paper examines major aspects of urban local government finances in this environment of reform and growing fiscal pressures, with special reference to the experience of Harare City Council. It is argued that some relative successes have been recorded, although a number of undesirable elements of colonial practices and various fiscal problem persist.     

Subsidiarity or Subterfuge? Resolving the Future of Local Government in the Australian Federal System

During Australia's centenary of federation (2001), the author, Local Government Association of Queensland and Courier–Mail newspaper surveyed 1,264 Queenslanders for their attitudes to future constitutional change, including a sample of 259 local government opinion leaders from across the state. The results of this pilot suggest ongoing political, functional and theoretical challenges surrounding the position of local government in Australia. Only 22 percent of local government respondents indicated a preference for the federal system to remain the same in another 100 years, against 70+ percent preferring significant structural change (50 percent seeking regional governments that replace the states). This higher–than–expected interest in change suggests that ongoing national reviews of the position of local government will need to reconsider federalism's values and structures from first principles, including engagement by Commonwealth and states alike with the principle of 'subsidiarity', if they are to deliver any long–term gains.     

Achieving Effective Collaborations to Help Communities Age Well

Effective policy responses to the ageing of the population are a priority area for government and non‐government agencies across Australia, particularly at the community level. This article focuses on the policy goal of ageing well at the local level, and more specifically, the strong principle of collaboration that underpins this goal. Too little is known about how to achieve effective collaboration in the ageing field. This article aims to address this by developing an analytical framework from the broad literature on collaborative processes, and applying this framework to data collected from interviews with stakeholders in ageing across two local communities in Queensland. While participants recognise the importance and strength of working together and provide local examples of how this has been achieved effectively, they also acknowledge the associated challenges and complexity. This all spanned the six factors of the framework: the context of ageing; the characteristics and relationships between partners; the need for adequate procedures; as well as structure and relationships aimed at building capacity; a shared sense of purpose; and access to adequate resources.     

Australian Councils Unelected by the Citizens in an Indigenous Setting: The Case of Nhulunbuy in the Northern Territory

Within the Australian democratic nation there are towns where the citizens are governed by administrations that have not been democratically elected by the residents. These unique residential centres are termed ‘special purpose towns’ that can be transformed to a permanent community governed by a democratic structure through a process termed normalisation. This paper examines the special purpose mining town of Nhulunbuy in the Northern Territory of Australia, which is on the cusp of the normalisation process. The paper outlines the similarities and differences of local government roles and responsibilities with Australian towns or shires that have publicly elected executive members. How Indigenous people are facilitating the normalisation of Nhulunbuy, through cultural perceptions of opportunity, is discussed. A concluding focus challenges well established conventional frameworks endorsing the roles of governments and miners in the normalisation phenomenon.     

Constitutional,legal and political problems of local government in Nigeria

The new Nigerian local government system was clearly intended by its creators to be a representative and democractic system of devolution. The speed with which elected councils have been dissolved and replaced by caretaker committees and state appointees contrasts strangely with the constitutional provision that there should be a system of local government by democratically elected local councils. The constitutionality of dissolution has been confused with the constitutionality of further local government reform. Dissolution should be seen as an emergency measure to be used rarely in cases of proven maladministration by a local government. Further reform and reorganization of a state's system of local government should be regarded as a legitimate power of the state legislature. The role given by the Constitution to local government should not be interpreted as entrenching the system. Constitutional amendment is not required should further reform be necessary.     

Local government in the new South Africa

On 1 November 1995 the final piece in South Africa's democratic jigsaw was slotted into place when elections were held to create 686 new local authorities throughout the country. The new councils are confronted with a daunting task, as they have been championed by the national Government of National Unity (GNU) as the main delivery mechanism for social and economic redistribution as well as the vehicle for the achievement of the aims and objectives of the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP). This article argues that the legislative framework developed for local government has an urban bias that has operated to the detriment of a manageable solution to the problems of rural local government in South Africa. The article examines the new structures of local democracy and argues that the need to secure local representation may have been achieved at the expense of functional efficiency. The lack of human and financial resources in some of the less developed councils makes service delivery problematic. If service delivery is not improved it could undermine the new local democracy as peoples' expectations remain unfulfilled. The article also examines the efforts to accommodate the political and economic demands of South Africa's traditional societies and the commercial farmers. The article argues that the efforts to incorporate these powerful elements into the new dispensation have largely failed, creating a potential for future disruption. The article concludes that the creation of a constitutional framework for local government must be seen as the first step in the development of autonomous local government, and that the main task now facing all three tiers of South Africa's government is the development of sufficient financial and human resources to ensure improvements in the standards of living of poor South Africans.     

What Determines Ethical Behavior in Public Organizations: Is It Rules or Leadership?

Leadership is widely seen as having an important role in fostering ethical conduct in organizations, but the ways in which the actions of leaders intersect with formal ethics regulation in shaping conduct have been little researched. This article examines this issue through a qualitative study of the operation of the “ethical framework” for English local government, which entailed all councils adopting a code of conduct to regulate the behavior of local politicians. Studying local government provides an opportunity to examine how personal and managerial factors combine to influence ethical conduct and to analyze the ways in which ethical leadership is exercised through multiple people in leadership roles (politicians and managers). The article finds that organizations that exhibit consistently good conduct have multiple leaders who demonstrate good conduct but also act to preempt the escalation of problems and thereby minimize the explicit use of ethics regulation.