Exploring Increasing Turnover of CAOs in Local Governments – Modifying a Serial Loyal PSB?

Departing from the empirical observation of an increasing turnover among the top permanent civil servants in Danish local governments after the 2007 Structural Reform, this paper aims to provide some qualitative insight into how such changes are experienced and explained by the administrative actors involved. Conceptualizing the politico-administrative relations as a Public Service Bargain (PSB) (Hood & Lodge 2006) the paper, gives insight into how the PSB is subject to re-negotiations and re-interpretations causing if not a ‘break down’ then a ‘modification’ (Lodge 2010:112) of one of the central characteristics of a pragmatic serial loyal bargain, that is permanence. Bargains are constituted not only by rewards, (e.g. permanence), but also competencies, loyalties and blame, why a modification of permanence expectedly is accompanied by changes in those other dimensions. Further, the paper aims at providing insights into tentative explanations at both an institutional/systemic and a relational/individual level. The empirical basis consists of qualitative interviews with 8 CAOs which, within recent years, have been removed from their position as well as two focus group interviews with CAOs in office. Providing qualitative and ‘thick descriptions’ allow for insight in to the ‘ongoing renegotiations’ of the different aspects of the bargain as experienced by the administrative actors involved, and hence allows for insights into the type of loyalties and competencies which expectedly accompany the apparently ‘modified’ reward, permanence.