Elite deliberation at the local level as a democratic innovation

This paper studies the introduction of an innovative way of organizing local politics, through a new system for management and governance system in a Swedish municipality. In contrast to the traditional representative model of democracy fueled by competition between parties and interests, the examined system instead draws on deliberative notions of democracy. Even though such features are far from unique for scholars of democracy, the studied case provides rare elements that seldom have been scrutinized in combination before. First, the deliberative aspects are far-reaching within the municipal organization as they include politicians, from both ruling coalitions and the opposition, together with the representatives from the administration. Second, the new system also goes against prevailing trends of increased polarisation between incumbents and opposition at the local level. With this backdrop, ambitions for a truly consensus-oriented system for management and governance appear as atypical and thereby worthy of scientific interest.  In practice, we study the new process for producing budgets and operational plans for the municipality, using a mixed-methods approach. Documentation and data from observations of deliberative meetings between politicians and public officials are combined with a survey of the participants of the process, with the aim of gauging the extent to which the process lives up to deliberative ideals as well as any effects on the relationship between elected officials and senior civil servants. The results show that although many preconditions for a deliberative process are present, and that there are signs of deliberation, the logic of representative democracy still overshadow the decision making, illustrating the difficulty in combining these two philosophies within a political system. Furthermore, the results illustrate the importance of the civil servants for maintaining such processes at the municipal level. Senior officials are responsible for the organization of the process and for the production of relevant information and drafts of the text, giving them several opportunities to influence the outcome. It is thus vital that they are perceived as competent and impartial by the other participants in the process. Although this case study departs from a single Swedish municipality, its conclusion of challenges with deliberative processes and the crucial role played by public officials may be valid for other contexts.