Public Administrators Assisting Interactive Political Processes: Problems and Dilemmas

Over the last two decades there has been a mushrooming of interactive forms of democracy, which bring local politicians into close dialogue and collaboration with relevant and affected citizens. There is very little research on how this development impacts the politico-administrative relation and what it implies for those public administrators who are assisting interactive political processes. Taking departure in generic tasks and roles assigned to public administrators in three contemporary governance paradigms we develop a list of key functions for public administrators in interactive democracy. Inspiration is found in recent theories of network management, collaborative and participatory governance (Ansell & Gash, 2008; Torfing & Sørensen, 2009; Klijn, 2016; McNabb, 2013). In addition we harvest insights from research on the interplay between politicians and public managers (Klijn & Skelcher, 2007; Mouritzen & Svara, 2002). We use the analytical framework for studying how public administrators involved in assisting a new type of interactive political committees in a Danish and Norwegian municipality operate - and what challenges and dilemmas they encounter while doing so. The data was collected in 2016-2017 as part of the POLECO-project, which has been funded by the Norwegian research Council. The data consist of observations of meetings, policy documents, and interviews with citizens, politicians and public administrators at different levels.