Implementing gender mainstreaming in public organizations, involves different tasks in different part of the organizations. Political engagements have render quite some attention in resent research, but the important part of public administration has not. Over time, power has been transferred to managers in public administration when it comes to decisions in policymaking, and informal power has been centralized to the leading full-time politician (chair of municipal commission) and to the director of the municipality, as a part of NPM. This has led to a tug-of-war in many Swedish municipalities about who does what. This, partly hidden, transference of power is of relevance for the practice of gender mainstreaming.
This paper explores the relationship between the politics and the administration in a local case of gender mainstreaming in a Swedish municipality, by investigating how and when political decisions are made, as well as how the political play is carried out.
In the case study a complex division between civil servants and the municipality’s politicians emerges, and this division is analyzed in respect to the vertical separation of roles between politics and administration and the hierarchical ordering within the organization. The result from the analysis shows that the politician’s role can be schematically described in four tasks; 1) mandate; 2) demand; 3) pledge of support; 4) ideological unity. Because of the complex division of labor between politics and administration in Örebro, the civil servant has been given considerable room to maneuver. The administrations tasks can be described as follow 1) responsibility for the formulation; 2) strategic, legitimizing actions; 3) perspective congestion; 4) responsibility for the result.
