I: Citizenship and Democracy: Networking Local Governance

Posisjon  2

I: Citizenship and Democracy: Networking Local Governance

Participants:
Richard Apostle, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia
Synnøve Jensen, University of Tromsø
Hilde Bjørnå, University of Tromsø
Grétar Þór Eyþórsson, University of Akureyri
Gestur Hovgaard, Center for Local and Regional Development, Klaksvik
Samal Matras Kristiansen, Roskilde University
Nils Aarsæther, University of Tromsø
Asbjørn Røiseland, Bodø University College


Places and territories (still) matter, and their development depend on processes in which local level democracy may - or may not - play an important, less important, or decisive role. Especially in the Fenno-Scandic part of the Nordic countries, and in Greenland, the municipality has become an institutional stronghold in the process of extending welfare state services to the rural periphery. This is less true in Iceland, and the Faroes and least likely in Atlantic Canada and Northwest Russia, with private (family) and voluntary institutions being more important in service delivery In these latter four areas, the municipality is not in a position to make and/or co-ordinate public investments. What we understand as the Nordic- type municipality, an elected body operating within a unitary state system, with far-reaching discretionary powers to create and run public services, is regarded as one of the most successful versions of local-level democracy. Nordic-type local democracy, endowed with wide responsibility for the well-being and welfare of its citizens, seems to be a model that several states are strive to realise today(notes on Eastern Europe, and North Canada here). However, the Nordic model is not unproblematic, especially from a fiscal perspective.

Nordic-style municipalities do make people creative and self-confident and, as they are more closely linked to the state than in federal systems, they increasingly demand money and attention from higher political levels in order to (1) reach the scope and level of services offered in larger city municipalities, or (2) to obtain support for implementation of projects and solutions that the municipalities have tailored to their specific needs, especially for employment and cultural policies.

Two trends are seriously affecting the operating of the Nordic type of municipality today. One stems from the state, the other from the local community. From the state, the demand is to ?cool down? a heated local public economy. In order to achieve this aim, a strategy of task splitting is seen as necessary, within a NPM services, quality and cost-efficiency model. This strategy challenges the very mission or idea of the modern municipality as the focal institution of the locality, and in particular challenges its role as a political arena for coordination and planning in the local community. On the part of the citizens, there is an increasing demand for diversified and tailored services, brought about by rising ethnic awareness among indigenous populations, by inflows of immigrants, and by the increasingly individualistic attitudes generated by an entertainment-oriented consumer culture.

The municipality, although confronted by new central and local community demands is still a modern, welfare state-inspired institution that now has to operate in a post-industrial era. The same citizens who demand special attention for specific local circumstances also expect the municipality to maintain its overall welfare responsibilities. This new level of demands requires political steering or governance processes which exceed specific group and individual needs.

There are no obvious solutions to the dilemmas presented by the present, complexity-ridden context in which the contemporary municipality must operate now, and for the foreseeable future. This means that we expect to considerable diversity in the ways contemporary municipalities operate, as compared to the more standard operating procedures of the "high" welfare state period. One alternative outcome may be that municipalities are marginalized by their commitment to carry on business as usual, politically and administratively, as in the most successful period of the welfare state. In these latter cases, some municipalities may disappear altogether, as a result of amalgamations with people in new, larger area served by private or semi-private infrastructure, health and educational arrangements.

How elected representatives, top planners and administrators, political party organizations, and the local media respond to the challenges presented by the combined effects of central and community level demands should be a top priority in local democracy studies. And this research task can greatly benefit by being conducted through a comparative case study methodology, within and across countries that have experienced roughly the same post-industrial restructuring processes.

Case studies of comparable local political units, based on governance and networking perspectives, and in which democratic standards are normatively evaluated, is one way of obtaining a clearer understanding of local political transformations. In this respect, the study will not be limited to the classical political science themes - formal and informal political and administrative processes. The operating of municipalities will be studied in the context of economic and or cultural restructurings, as well as daily life. This focus will not be restricted to processes within the locality itself, and will include an overview of relationships and networks involving outside institutions and actors.

Today, social science endeavours can profit from a scientific heritage represented by studies conducted in both pre-modern and industrial local settings. Thus, our planned research efforts can produce useful comparisons by being carried out in settings that were closely studied in the last decades of the twentieth century. Even though today?s communication, mobility and production systems are quite different from those of the 1960s, the traditions and practices that evolved in the era of industry and welfare state expansion may still have a bearing on today's coping strategies. And we hypothesise that to the extent that we find a lack of change, this may be explained by insights gained from classical organization theory of structures reproducing themselves, including the incrementalist perspective.

Complexities and networking strategies
Our new focus should be on two salient challenges: First, the local democratic handling of increasing complexities in civil society should be addressed. The new diversity among traditional citizens, people with special needs and people living in non-traditional ways, represents one challenge. Another will be an increase of in-migrants, in the form of foreign labourers, retirees, people looking for vacation homes, and refugees. To what extent do new groups, and new identities, inform or challenge the way the local democratic system is operating?

Second, the networking practices of the political, administrative, civil, and economic spheres have all increased, involving outside actors in structures and processes that are sometimes among equals ,but at times result in domination by stronger outside actors. The typical situation of the peripheral municipality is that its current citizens do not provide a large enough market for products and (commercial) services. Places on the periphery increasingly have to rely on exports to survive and prosper. Exports are of two kinds: natural resources (and the handling of these in a physical sense), and tourism. But municipalities can only engage in processes of local economic development. In some countries, these tasks are outside of the municipal mandate. Thus services, and the way they are organized and reorganized, will be a crucial element in municipality viability. In the services field, we expect processes of networking to be less evident on the surface, but at the same time we expect classical government practices to become more diffuse, and "governance" a better concept for capturing the processes involved in maintaining a "decent" service standard (often in co-operation with neighbouring municipal units).

Research design
The selection of municipalities should allow for comparative follow-up studies, and include both small town (about 10.000?) and rural area (less than 5.000) municipalities. Two of each category for each country would form a suitable number of cases.
The countries involved are:
Norway (4 cases)
Canada (2-4 cases)
Iceland (4 cases)
Faroe Islands (4 cases)

The research will take the form of interviews, observation, plus document and media content analyses, based on fieldwork of varying duration during 2005 and 2006.
The basic questions to be addressed are:
- To what extent have new needs and challenges created a situation of complexity in this municipality?
- To what extent do the politicians and municipal administration respond to these new needs and challenges?
- To what extent are local private businesses and civil society organizations involved?
- To what extent does the municipality rely on or utilize partnerships with outside actors and institutions?
- By which criteria, democratic and otherwise, are priorities set, in the municipal political arenas, as well as in a wider locality "coping strategy" context?

A concrete interview guide will be worked out, to secure the comparability "core" of the study, but of course country-specific contexts will determine much of the practical research.