Public administrators in interactive democracy: a multi-paradigmatic approach

ABSTRACT

Currently, interactive forms of democracy that bring local politicians into dialogue and collaboration with relevant and affected citizens are mushrooming. While some research has investigated how interactive democracy affects citizens and politicians, we know little about what interactive democracy means for public administrators. This article presents the results of a case study of role perceptions and coping strategies among public administrators assisting a new type of interactive political committee in two Nordic municipalities. Guided by a multi-paradigmatic conceptual framework featuring public administrators’ roles and coping strategies in interactive governance, the study shows that individual public administrators identify with different administrative roles, and that political and administrative leadership sentiments condition their choice of coping strategies. Moreover, the coping strategy that public administrators select to handle intra- and inter-paradigmatic role dilemmas can have dire consequences for the interplay between interactive democracy and local representative government.

KEYWORDS:

• Interactive democracy
• administrative roles
• coping strategies
• administrative paradigms

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Norges Forskningsråd 254781/H20.

Notes on contributors

Eva Sørensen

Eva Sørensen is Professor of Public Administration and Democracy in the Department of Social Sciences and Business at Roskilde University, Denmark. Her main research area is political leadership and governance, focusing on the interplay between politicians, staff and citizens in local governments in Scandinavia. She has directed numerous large scale research projects, and published many journal articles, on related topics.

Tina Bentzen is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Business and Society at Roskilde University, Denmark. Her fields of research within public administration cover political leadership, trust-based leadership and governance as well as translational studies in public organizations. Recent publications include ‘The translational diamond: robust translation of magic concept in public organizations’, International Journal of Public Leadership 15 (2).