How the Increase in Inter-Municipal Entities is Affecting Icelandic Local Councillors

Icelandic local council members are with few exceptions, amateurs or laymen when it comes to political representation. There is also a very high voluntary turnover in councils with around 60 per cent of council members being new members at the beginning of each council term (Hlynsdóttir 2017). This is strongly related to size with smaller municipalities experiencing higher turnover than larger municipalities and cities. Several explanations for the high level of turnover have been suggested such as low level of remuneration and high workload. Icelandic councils tend to be smaller than what is usual for the other Nordic countries furthermore; the number of administrative staff is also lower. In addition, it has been suggested that a sizable number of the administrative staff is now found outside the city hall as it has been outsourced through various types of inter-municipal schemes This suggests that Icelandic council members are faced with a high workload, while at the same time the capacity of the permanent in-House administration to lead policy making, provide service and professional advice to council members is diminished. Polidano (2000) argues that the size of the permanent administration is an important measurement when it comes to evaluating the overall administrative capacity. Thus, the purpose of this paper is twofold. Firstly, to explore the capacity of the local administration through the number of professional staff within the internal administration (in-House) and external administration (housed elsewhere). Secondly, to explore the assumption that while inter-municipal cooperation may enhance the overall capacity of a municipality in the area of service provision it undermines the laymen political system as the connection between local councillors and local administrative staff is broken. Thus, the laymen politician lacks both the professional capacity of a professional politician as well as the professional assistance of the local administrative staff.