Political Accountability in Local Representative Democracy-Experiences from Danish Local Governments

摘要

When in representative democracies a few people are given the power to make decisions that affect the many, an important control mechanism is that the many can hold the few accountable for decisions when the many (as voters) evaluate the few (the incumbent politicians) on election day. This also goes for the local level, although the principle of holding elected politicians accountable is often challenged. At the local government level this is especially true for the many new reform initiatives that aim to improve the economy, professional sustainability, coordination, citizen involvement etc. In the paper Denmark serves as a case study and the conclusion is that the importance of processes of accountability is taken very seriously. A large reform in 2005 relied exclusively on amalgamations and not on inter-municipal cooperation, which was an alternative -concerns for accountability made the Danes decide for the former. However, the mechanism of holding politicians accountable is continuously challenged; the paper identifies five such challenges, namely multi-level governance, consensus democracy, professionalization, user boards and quangos.