Governing Public Officers and Agencies: The Role of Networks Through Governance Forums - An Analysis of the Swedish Baltic Coast

Extensive research has discussed how central governments deploy a set of strategies to influence implementation by public agencies and decentralized organisations. This paper aims to add a focus on the role of forums in the study of steering public administration, emphasizing that power can be exerted by shaping where and how interactions occur, not only through formal structures. In doing so, we extend the concept of steering implementation by analysing how different levels of government try to influence implementation and management processes at multiple scales, beyond those under they direct administrative responsibility. Our study focuses on the conflict over the management of seals and cormorants and fisheries in the Swedish Baltic Sea. Our empirical analysis of the case case shows how actors at regional, local, and national levels are not only passive receivers of central government strategies to govern the implementation process, but actively seek to steer processes at other scales, including upwards and laterally. Our analysis highlights how officers’ creation and strategic attendance of different forums allows them to do that by mobilising and strengthening their networks. For example, in one of our studied regions, regional authorities purposely try to influence both neighboring regions and national agencies, while these same agencies negotiate their own influence over local implementation. This occurs alongside the persistence of traditional hierarchical strategies to direct the work of public officers, such as the national government’s continued efforts to direct agency behavior through fostering communication channels or isolating specific public agencies. Beyond identifying these multidirectional relationships, the paper expands the analytical toolkit for understanding strategies from the political to steer bureaucratic implementation by focusing on the role of forums and the networks that public officers create through those. Indeed, in addition to established strategies like creating new organizations, strategies can also include the creation of new forums—spaces where cross-scalar engagement is both cultivated and contested.