Innovating for Political Leadership – The Case of Norway

For some years now, one has referred to innovation as the avenue leading to a better and more productive public sector. Contrary to large national reforms in e.g. the welfare sector, innovations are more related to the operational level of public sector, and more based in the creative joining of forces among those involved in service delivery and problem solving, like professionals, local administrators and local politicians. In Norway, as elsewhere, most innovations are probably taking place in the administrative and professional part of local governments, while even highly praised among elected political leaders; relatively few innovations have so far been targeting political leaders or the political system as such. This is somewhat surprising given the many challenges related to e.g. the recruitment of candidates for local elections or the feeling of powerlessness among local councilors reported in empirical studies. However, there are indications that innovations targeting the political system are increasing, partly following in the aftermath of an ongoing Norwegian amalgamation reform. The paper will discuss innovations targeting political leaders in the context of Norwegian local government. Both innovation and political leadership will be developed conceptually based in contemporary governance literature. Briefly, the paper will also review Norwegian research on local political leadership, which so far has been preoccupied with top-leaders and the representative system. For simplicity, the types of political innovations relevant for political leadership can be sorted into the following three groups: • New types of interactions between elected politicians and administrative leaders, where the aim is to softening the NPM-inspired idea of an hourglass-like divergence between politics and administration. • New types of interactions among elected politicians, where the aim is to exceed the limits for deliberative processes imposed by partisan politics. • New types of interaction between elected and non-elected citizens, where the aim is to take advantage of the everyday knowledge held by citizens. Besides discussing and illustrating these types of innovations, the paper will also discuss to what extent these innovations challenge existing ideas about the role of elected leaders, based in legal, cultural and historical norms, and how one can overcome these challenges by e.g. institutional changes, processes of learning, facilitation and leadership.