Elites by design? How organisational structures shape assignment concentration in local government

Local government is often celebrated as democracy’s training ground, yet political authority at this level can be far more concentrated than democratic ideals suggest. This article examines how political offices accumulate among a few individuals in Swedish municipalities – a critical case given Sweden’s strong democratic norms and exceptional decentralisation. If oligarchic tendencies emerge here, they are likely to appear anywhere. Using original data from 27 strategically sampled municipalities, we map political assignments across councils, committees, and municipally owned corporations, and introduce a novel measure of ‘assignment inequality’ that captures top-heaviness in local power structures. Our findings challenge the widespread assumption that elite concentration primarily results from small scale or limited recruitment pools. Instead, institutional design – particularly corporatisation – proves decisive. Municipalities with extensive corporate networks exhibit systematically higher concentration and more skewed distributions of political authority. Local elites, we conclude, emerge by design, not default.