Local Government and Governance in Norway: Stretched Accountability in Network Politics

This article is concerned with the democratic quality of network governance in a local context; in particular, the interplay between traditional local government and the emerging network structures. What forms of interplay can be observed between traditional local government and emerging network structures? Of particular interest in this respect is the role of local councillors. As elected representatives, councillors embody the special commitment of authorities towards the public. However, involvement in networks implies a danger of capture, and if network decisions are not open to public scrutiny, democratic control is difficult to achieve even if local councillors are represented. This article therefore discusses networks and accountability: In what ways and to what degree are networks held accountable? Empirically, it explores three local policy networks, all involving the city of Kristiansand. One group of networks – neighbourhood networks – is internally initiated and maintained by the municipality of Kristiansand. Another network is an intermunicipal collaboration involving Kristiansand and five surrounding municipalities. The third network is an example of a public‐private partnership that includes the municipality of Kristiansand, as well as several other actors. The case studies show that the actual presence of local government representatives in networks is not enough to ensure accountability. Lines of popular accountability are stretched, either because the networks are deemed irrelevant by the city councillors, or because networks develop decision‐making styles that shield them from external political control, or because local councillors deliberately deprive themselves of influence over important policy fields.     

Democratic Accountability in Decentralised Governance1

This article develops a conceptual framework for studying democratic accountability in decentralised governance, and discusses critical issues about democratic accountability from a citizen's perspective. First, the concept is discussed and adapted to make it useful for studying democratic accountability in different governance structures. Second, the article scrutinises conditions for democratic accountability in decentralised governance based on three models. Third, democratic accountability is discussed with reference to a case study of public reviewers operating in four municipalities in Sweden. The study indicates that municipal auditors and the local media have the greatest impact on municipal policy. On the whole, auditors improve local governments’ internal control and systems for steering and monitoring municipal policy, whereas the media sometimes alter the policy agenda without changing the policy. Auditors maintain and support an elitist democratic orientation of democratic accountability, and the media maintain this democratic orientation and in addition promote democratic dialogue. Viewed from a citizen's perspective, the traditional accountability system does not work satisfactorily. State inspectors and municipal auditors – two important public reviewers in the current system – could improve their work to make it more useful to citizens’ democratic control. Another way discussed to develop democratic accountability is to promote participatory policy and concrete means of accountability (e.g. on‐site visits, conducted tours and different forms of democratic dialogue). The formal way to improve democratic accountability implies more transparency, monitoring and control, which may also lead to distrust and scapegoat thinking (i.e. a surveillance society), whereas concrete modes of accountability, more associated with participatory and deliberative democracy, imply mutual responsibility and trust building. Strengthening participatory policy, active citizens, collective responsibility and democratic dialogue could be an alternative to the emerging audit society.     

The opposition deficit in EU accountability: Evidence from over 20 years of plenary debate in four member states

Debates about the European Union's democratic legitimacy put national parliaments into the spotlight. Do they enhance democratic accountability by offering visible debates and electoral choice about multilevel governance? To support such accountability, saliency of EU affairs in the plenary ought to be responsive to developments in EU governance, has to be linked to decision‐making moments and should feature a balance between government and opposition. The recent literature discusses various partisan incentives that support or undermine these criteria, but analyses integrating these arguments are rare. This article provides a novel comparative perspective by studying the patterns of public EU emphasis in more than 2.5 million plenary speeches from the German Bundestag, the British House of Commons, the Dutch Tweede Kamer and the Spanish Congreso de los Diputados over a prolonged period from 1991 to 2015. It documents that parliamentary actors are by and large responsive to EU authority and its exercise where especially intergovernmental moments of decision making spark plenary EU salience. But the salience of EU issues is mainly driven by government parties, decreases in election time and is negatively related to public Euroscepticism. The article concludes that national parliaments have only partially succeeded in enhancing EU accountability and suffer from an opposition deficit in particular.     

Blurring Boundaries: The Integration of NGOs into Governance in Kenya

This article examines the impact of the proliferation of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) on governance in Kenya. Looking specifically at service provision, it analyzes how the growth of NGOs has begun to change the way decisions are made and policy is formulated. In so doing, the article explores shifting NGO–government relations over time. The governance of service provision has become a complex, intertwined affair in which NGOs sit on national policymaking committees, government integrates NGO plans and budgets into national policy, and government actors learn from and copy NGOs' participatory, accountable approach. Through (1) the integration of former NGO leaders in government, (2) increasing the variety of voices heard in government decision making, (3) lobbying by NGOs, and (4) mimicry of NGOs by government, governance of Kenyan service provision has begun to become more democratic. Through such changes, developing countries are witnessing a blurring of the line between public and private.     

Another lost decade? The future of reform in Latin America

The 1990s ended equivocally in Latin America. What has gone wrong? Is economic failure the cause or the consequence of the democratic decay and the erosion of governance throughout the region? The review essay revisits the debate on the intricate links between politics and economics in the second stage of reform. Moving beyond standard typologies of regime type, it explores the interactions between the quality of democratic governance and the performance of economic policy under democratic auspices, in particular its credibility. It is now amply recognized that reforms have been hindered by inefficient unreliable and unaccountable government institutions. Furthermore, the manner in which market reforms have been implemented has undermined governance and accountability. The importance of policy credibility has essentially been neglected as a pivotal condition for effective economic reform. Consequently, policymakers propose a new round of reforms, centring on strengthening the institutions of governance and modifying the incentives shaping public policy. The essay argues that restoring the credibility of policy requires a fundamental redefinition of the state and reforming the methods of government and the styles of policymaking. The defining challenge of Latin American countries is to strengthen capacity to adequately implement policy and credibly commit to policy reform. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Balancing Regionalism and Localism: How Institutions and Incentives Shape American Transportation Policy

Public policy decisions are increasingly made by regional governance efforts that involve diverse decision makers from multiple government units within a geographic region. These decision-making bodies face competing pressures to represent regional and local interests. We study how decision makers balance preferences for regionalism and localism within metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), the policymaking entities that are responsible for implementing U.S. federal surface transportation policy at the regional level. Our model of regional governance relates variation in regional policy outcomes to the incentives of MPO decision makers and the institutional environments in which they interact. Analyzing data from a sample of the nation's largest metropolitan areas, we find that MPOs dominated by elected officials produce more locally focused policies, holding other factors constant, while MPOs dominated by nonelected public managers produce more regionally oriented policies. Contextual factors, as well as the regional governance institutions themselves, further shape the balance between regionalism and localism.     

Metropolitan Institutions and Policy Coordination: The Integration of Land Use and Transport Policies in Swiss Urban Areas

The article addresses the question of how different metropolitan institutional settings affect the quality of political negotiation processes and their subsequent policy decisions. Starting from the theoretical controversy of the two metropolitan reform traditions, two opposing ideal types of metropolitan government institutions are conceptualized: on the one hand the public choice model that stands for a decentralized, nonprofessional, and politically dependent administration in fragmented urban areas, and on the other hand the neoprogressive model that stands for direct public service production by centralized and professionalized bureaucracies within consolidated municipalities. A qualitative comparative analysis of nine decision cases in four Swiss urban areas uncovers three main results: voluntary, positive, and policy-driven coordination as well as well coordinated policy solutions are found in centralized rather than decentralized institutional settings, in fragmented rather than consolidated metropolitan areas, and in project structures with a strict separation of the political sphere of negotiating from the technical sphere rather than in negotiations without such clear distinction. However, it is only under very specific institutional conditions that these well-coordinated solutions are also being implemented. The findings must be put into perspective in two respects. On the one hand, the positive effect of fragmentation on the quality of deliberation is supposedly unique to Switzerland due to its very strong federalism. On the other hand, the importance of bureaucratic autonomy is probably due to Switzerland's marked tradition of a weak state. The results from the nine test cases in general, however, substantiate the hypotheses derived from the neoprogressive model of metropolitan government institutions rather than the public choice model.     

LOCAL GOVERNMENT DISCRETION AND ACCOUNTABILITY IN TURKEY

After ratification of the European Charter of Local Self‐Government in 1993, Turkey has witnessed major local government reform efforts in 2000s. The policy objectives of these reforms were granting more political, administrative and fiscal discretion to local governments along the principles of democratic decentralization and strengthening accountability linkages between citizens and local governments. We employ a diagnostic framework to analyse the impact of these reforms. We argue that reforms have achieved limited success in improving decision‐making autonomy and accountability of local governments. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

U.S.‐Style Leadership for English Local Government?

Significant changes in the political management of local authorities in the United Kingdom are now taking place as a result of legislation passed by the Labour government since 1997. The new political management models aim to modernize local governance by strengthening local leadership, streamlining decision making, and enhancing local accountability. These changes owe much to U.S. experience: They involve the introduction of a separation of powers between an executive and an assembly, and they allow local authorities to introduce directly elected mayors for the first time ever. Is U.K. local government beginning to adopt what might be described as U.S.‐style approaches to local governance? The evidence suggests the new institutional designs for U.K. local authorities represent a radical shift toward U.S.‐style local leadership and decision making. However, the U.K. central state remains heavily involved in the details of local decision making, to an extent that would be unthinkable in the United States.     

Local Governance Versus Centralization: Connecticut Wetlands Governance as a Model

Scholars disagree whether local decision making is inherently more democratic and sustainable than centralized governance structures. While some maintain it is, due to the incorporation of local knowledge, citizen decision makers' closeness to the issues, and the benefits of participatory democracy, others find it as susceptible to issues of corruption and poor implementation as any other scale. We argue that with wetlands, a natural resource with critical local benefits, it is imperative to incorporate local governance, using the U.S. state of Connecticut as an example. Despite the American policy of No Net Loss, the local benefits of wetland resources cannot be aggregated on a national scale. Each local ecosystem needs wetland resources to ensure local ecological benefits such as flood control and pollution remission, as well as the substantial economic benefits of recreation. We illustrate the benefits of local control of wetlands with data from the American state of Connecticut, which consistently surpasses the federal wetland goal of No Net Loss due, we argue, to the governance structure of town‐level wetlands commissions. A national policy such as No Net Loss, where wetlands are saved or created in designated areas and destroyed in others, is insufficient when it ignores critical benefits for localities. The Connecticut system using local volunteers and unpaid appointees is a successful method for governing common‐pool wetland systems. In the case of Connecticut, we find that local decision making is not a “trap,” but instead an effective model of sustainable, democratic local governance.     

The importance of input and output legitimacy in democratic governance: Evidence from a population-based survey experiment in four West European countries

The study of subjective democratic legitimacy from a citizens’ perspective has become an important strand of research in political science. Echoing the well-known distinction between ‘input-oriented’ and ‘output-oriented’ legitimacy, the scientific debate on this topic has coined two opposed views. Some scholars find that citizens have a strong and intrinsic preference for meaningful participation in collective decision making. But others argue, to the contrary, that citizens prefer ‘stealth democracy’ because they care mainly about the substance of decisions, but much less about the procedures leading to them. In this article, citizens’ preferences regarding democratic governance are explored, focusing on their evaluations of a public policy according to criteria related to various legitimacy dimensions, as well as on the (tense) relationship among them. Data from a population-based conjoint experiment conducted in eight metropolitan areas in France, Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom is used. By analysing 5,000 respondents’ preferences for different governance arrangements, which were randomly varied with respect to their input, throughput and output quality as well as their scope of authority, light is shed on the relative importance of different aspects of democratic governance. It is found, first, that output evaluations are the most important driver for citizens’ choice of a governance arrangement; second, consistent positive effects of criteria of input and throughput legitimacy that operate largely independent of output evaluations can be discerned; and third, democratic input, but not democratic throughput, is considered somewhat more important when a governance body holds a high level of formal authority. These findings run counter to a central tenet of the ‘stealth democracy’ argument. While they indeed suggest that political actors and institutions can gain legitimacy primarily through the provision of ‘good output’, citizens’ demand for input and throughput do not seem to be conditioned by the quality of output as advocates of stealth democratic theory suggest. Democratic input and throughput remain important secondary features of democratic governance.     

The Democratic Soup: Mixed Meanings of Political Representation in Governance Networks

This article explores how political representation is enacted in governance networks, where interdependent actors from government, business, and civil society coproduce public policy. A combined dramaturgical and discourse analysis considers how representation is staged, performed, and articulated in a case study of recent Dutch energy reforms. The findings suggest that networks produce a kind of "democratic soup" where actors and institutions enact alternative meanings of representation that sit uncomfortably alongside representative democracy's emphasis on political authorization, accountability, and responsiveness. These democratic attributes appear to be decoupled from representation in governance networks and thus need to be secured through other means.     

Overestimating the Shift from Government to Governance: Evidence from Swiss Metropolitan Areas

There is an oft‐stated claim in political science research that public sector reforms in Western democracies are consistent with a shift from government to governance. This article challenges that claim. Based on a comparative analysis of governance reforms in Swiss metropolitan areas, the article reveals that what seems to be a shift to governance may turn out to be a path to government, however, including a change either from the local to the metropolitan level or from general‐purpose authorities to task‐specific jurisdictions. Further, the article analyzes the political dynamics behind governance reforms. It shows that exogenous pressures put existing governance schemes under strain. Its impact, however, is mediated by the initial institutional setting and the narratives responding to case‐specific political dilemmas.     

Democratic Governance: Systems and Radical Perspectives

How might we think about democratic governance? This paper distinguishes between system governance and radical democracy. System governance borrows the language of radical democracy while missing its spirit. It advocates increased participation through networks because new institutionalists suggest networks are an efficient means of service delivery. It advocates increased consultation to build consensus because communitarians suggest consensus is needed for effective political institutions. System governance is, then, a top‐down discourse based on the alleged expertise of social scientists. Radical democrats concentrate instead on the self‐government of citizens. Instead of the incorporation of established groups in networks, they promote a pluralism within which aspects of governance are handed over to associations in civil society. And instead of consultation prior to decision making, they promote a dialogue in which citizens play an active role in making and implementing public policy.     

THE POWER OF THE PURSE AND BUDGETARY ACCOUNTABILITY: EXPERIENCES FROM SUBNATIONAL GOVERNMENTS IN CHINA

Accountability is the cornerstone of fiscal administration. This research studies the relationship between accountability and the sharing of budgetary power. We found that the accountability in China is supported by the superior of bureaucratic power, instead of the comprehensiveness of various accountability components. The implication is that the accountability is facilitated in terms of emphasising to whom government officials are accountable within the chain of command, reducing goal conflicts and improving strategic goal attainment. However, it is hindered at the same time in terms of lacking evaluations perceived to be impartial, limited room for democratic accountability, over‐implementation of policies at all costs, and weak comprehensive awareness of ‘accountable for what’ (as long as it is a policy direction from the top). The structure of the power of the purse both enables and limits the tone and terrain of budget accountability in particular and government accountability in general. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cooperative forms of governance: Problems of democratic accountability in complex environments

Abstract. Various schools of research in public policy (the literature on 'governance' and its continental counterparts) are converging to focus on the growth of policy styles based on cooperation and partnership in networks, instead of on vertical control by the state. This article focuses on issues of democratic accountability and responsiveness with these governance arrangements. It argues that until recently the legitimacy of governance networks was not at the forefront of theoretical developments, even though the 'democratic deficit' of governance is problematic both for normative and for pragmatic reasons. There is now increased sensitivity to this problem, but the remedies presented in the literature are unsatisfactory, and critiques of governance presuppose a somewhat idealised image of representative democracy in terms of accountability or responsiveness of decision-makers. They also fail to offer adequate solutions to some of the central legitimacy problems of policy-making in complex societies.     

The Market Turn in EU Governance—The Emergence of Public–Private Collaboration

The question asked here is how the horizontal relationship between public and private actors, with the overall aim of delivering public service, is squared with the requirement of democratic accountability according to the traditional model of command and control. Empirical analysis of the European satellite navigation program (Galileo), the European Investment Bank and health, and the European Financial market (the Lamfalussy model) shows that efficiency is at the forefront of the collaborations. Democratic accountability is assumed to take place because there is a formal chain of delegation. However, the private actors are not part of that chain and their accountability is never addressed. The market turn in European Union governance has opened up for private authority and emphasis of output legitimacy. It has not opened up for democratic reforms according to the very authority system of governance. We are dealing with a governance turn and yet it is still government.     

New Modes of Governance and the Participatory Myth

One of the most common arguments about ‘new governance’ is that it is characterised by heterarchy rather than by hierarchy, creating horizontal modes of governance among a multitude of actors – public and private – involving all relevant stakeholders. Often implicitly and sometimes explicitly, this argument is linked with a normative democratic claim that praises the particular participatory features of ‘new governance’ as compared to ‘old governance’. Using as a case study European occupational health and safety policy, characterised by a shift from ‘old’ to ‘new governance’ since the 1990s, this article warns us that one should be very reluctant in making normative claims on new governance. The analysis of new governance modes such as comitology, agency networking, and social dialogue in this field shows that more horizontal and heterarchical governance does not mean automatically more participatory governance in terms of involving civil society actors and all stakeholders.     

Signing up to devolution: the prevalence of contract over governance in English devolution policy

Initial analyses of the ‘devolution deals’ that form the cornerstone of current efforts to devolve power within England assess the policy against conventional governance criteria: accountability, transparency, and the quality of governance systems. In fact, English devolution policy has little connection with territorial governance. Instead, it closely resembles a contractual process, with central government determining the terms on which it will outsource specified programmes and projects to local governments, complete with requirements for ‘business readiness’, implementation plans, evaluation requirements, and future joint working. Accountability, governance and even geography take second place to the aim of improving central policy outcomes via a contract-style relationship. This perspective is styled ‘post-territorial devolution’: it accounts more effectively for the shape of the policy so far than traditional governance perspectives, which are often laced with normative positions.     

Policy coordination in the European metropolis: A meta-analysis

A major concern of the ongoing metropolitan debate is the growing need for policy coordination in urban areas. By means of a meta-analysis of 17 case studies regarding the integration of urban transport and land use policies in Western Europe, the present article focuses on the institutional conditions for policy coordination in metropolitan areas. For this purpose, hypotheses are derived from the two classic schools of the metropolitan debate: on the one hand the progressive model that stands for direct public service production by centralised and professionalised bureaucracies within consolidated municipalities, and on the other hand the public choice model that stands for a decentralised, non-professional, and politically dependent administration in fragmented urban areas. The results of a Qualitative Comparative Analysis show that well coordinated policy decisions are only implemented in institutional settings that correspond with the progressive model, thus promoting this model rather than the public choice model.