Accountability by Professionalism or Managerialism? Exploring Attitudes Among Swedish and Norwegian Local Government Leaders

Abstract

Most developed countries continue to experience problems with malfeasance and corruption, making accountability a fundamental concern of the public government. Still, the mechanisms which ensure accountability are not given. This article explores two different and apparently conflicting principles of accountability in public organizations: “Professionalism” based on values and internalized incentive structures and “Managerialism” based on externalized incentives and hierarchy. The empirical analysis is based on a comparative survey among local government leaders in Sweden and Norway. The analysis shows that both professionalism and managerialism are regarded as important means for accountability and tend to be understood as complementary more than competing principles.

Keywords:

• accountability
• control
• new public management
• professionalism
• local government

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The research departs from the project “Democratic legitimacy by performance?” which is funded by Norwegian Research Council’s program “Democracy, Governance and Regionality (Demosreg, Grant #209766-H20). The paper was completed while Asbjørn Røiseland was a visiting fellow at the School of Government, Melbourne University, whose hospitality is gratefully acknowledged. An earlier version of the paper was presented at the annual Nordic conference on local government research (Norkom).