Comparing Local Institutional Reforms Aiming to Strengthen Local Political Leadership: Some Danish and Norwegian Experiences

This Paper aims to explore the recent attempts of local councillors to strengthen their political leadership through institutional reforms of their working conditions and the way that local council operates. The countries selected for analysis are Denmark and Norway where local amalgamation reforms have triggered discussion about the political leadership of local councillors. Cases of institutional reforms are identified through a combination of a Delphi study and the use of crowdsourcing and data is collected through structured interviews. The background, content and expected impact of the institutional reforms in Danish and Norwegian local governments are compared across municipalities and countries in order to find and explain similarities and differences vis-à-vis different political motivations, political cultures and legislative conditions. The first section discusses the need for and challenges to political leadership in the Nordic countries and sets out the research question. The next section defines the key concepts of political leadership, institutional reform and governance capacity and links them together in a conceptual model. The third section describes and compares the modus operandi of local government in Denmark and Norway and discusses the prospect for institutional reform. The fourth section accounts for the data collection and presents the results of the structured comparison of cases of institutional reforms from Denmark and Norway. The fifth section discusses and explains the results with reference to political and institutional factors. The conclusion summarizes the results and identifies some future research tasks.