Elite Deliberation at the Local Level ‐ Politicians and Civil Servants Reaching Agreements in a Swedish Municipality

ABSTRACT This paper studies the introduction of an innovative way of organizing local politics, through a new system for management and governance system in the Swedish municipality Timrå. The study is focused on the process for producing budgets and operational plans. In contrast to the traditional representative model of democracy, the new system instead draws on deliberative notions of democracy. As the process includes politicians from all parties, together with representatives from the administration, it is an example of elite deliberation at the local level. The aim is to answer the question of whether this process lives up to the ideals of a deliberative and consensus‐oriented model for decision making. Additionally, it addresses the relationship between elected officials and senior civil servants in a deliberative setting. The study uses a mixed‐methods approach, combining documentation and data from observations of deliberative meetings with a survey of the participants. The results show a process that largely lives up to deliberative ideals such as openness and respect, as well as positions being justified in terms of the common good. Omnipresent economic constraints as well as the perception that participants had to some degree already made up their mind and were bound by partisan considerations lowers the potential for constructive solutions. The civil service played a dual role; rarely actively participating in the deliberative process while controlling the organisation and preconditions for it explicitly.