Between Fragmentation and Coordination

The article describes recent development in the Swedish local government system. This is made through four different ‘organizing perspectives’. Three organizing perspectives challenge the model of local popular government. The functional challenge focuses on the market orientation, which means that nearly all sorts of public activities should be put on the market according ti the belief that competition is the most important motor of public economy. The communitarian challenge focuses on the social and political order of user and citizen organizations in relation to the municipal organization, which can be viewed in terms of the relation between small-scale democracy and the large-scale democracy. Finally, the idea of governance structures focuses on how to mobilize and integrate different types of resources across borders within the public sector and between public and private institutions. By using the different organizing perspectives it is shown that the development of local politics and democracy is driven by different ideas. Experiences from reforms, which are related to these ideas, are presented. The article concludes by pointing out some important challenges for future development of local democracy in Sweden.