Between Government and Governance – Local Solutions for Reconciling Representative Government and Network Governance

This article discusses the possibilities of reconciling representative government and network governance in local government, and the implications of this reconciliation for the roles and requirements of politicians and administrators. The experiences discussed are derived from three case study municipalities in Finland. The results indicate that municipalities find it difficult to work both effectively and democratically in new governance networks. They have worked out some good practices for maintaining coordination and democratic legitimacy, but the best practices are demanding and time-consuming, and are not necessarily well suited to the current institutionalised role of local councillors. Key Words: Governancenew public managementnetwork governancedemocracy Notes 1 The Project for Developing Local Democracy was set up by the Finnish Ministry of the Interior in December 2003. The project was one of the subprojects of the Citizen Participation Policy Programme which, in turn, is one of the four Policy Programmes adopted by the government. Its implementation rested within the Department of Municipal Affairs, a part of the Ministry of the Interior, and its implementation period extended from January 2004 to December 2006. The project aimed to establish how representative democracy, market-oriented performance of functions assigned to municipalities, and the outsourcing of these functions can be coordinated. In order to reach its goals, the project included municipal development work which was being carried out with five partnership municipalities or regions: the cities of Imatra, Kotka, and Turku, the Oulu sub-region and an alliance made up of three municipalities – Juva, Joroinen and Rantasalmi.