Democratic legitimacy by performance?

The main research question for this project is the effect of local governance and service production on the legitimacy of local democracy. Commonly, the concept of legitimacy is discussed and understood in the context of democratic elections and procedures for decision-making. Over the last few years, however, scholars have increasingly been arguing that we need regard quality of service production and the effectiveness of public problem solving as a source of legitimacy to a greater extent. The debate is partly following from recent New Public Management- inspired reforms, which has put costumer choice and user influence on the agenda. The main aim of the project is to study this potential shift from input- to output-based legitimacy in Norwegian and Swedish local governments. The methodology chosen for the project has been to combine citizen surveys in both countries, surveys to a selection of political and administrative leaders in all local governments in the two countries, and finally, case studies in eight local governments (four in each country). In terms of academic results, the project team has published a number of book and journal articles directed to the academic as well as a political/administrative audience. The main finding of the project is that a dramatic shift from input-based to output-based sources of legitimacy is not possible to identify. Classic types of democratic participation such as elections (input) and quality of service production (output) appear to be complementary sources to legitimacy more than alternative sources.

The fundamental idea of this comparative research project is to investigate the significance of local governments' service delivery and performance as a basis for the legitimacy they acquire. Through a combination of extensive survey analysis and case stu dies, the project investigates local elected representatives', administrative staffs' and citizens' perceptions of local government input and output based legitimacy in two different national contexts (Norway and Sweden). Input legitimacy will depart from the values of liberal democracy and measures like trust in elected representatives, belief in the importance of transparency and similar procedural characteristics, while output legitimacy will be based in the actors view on corruption, discrimination an d similar violations of the principle of impartiality as well as service satisfaction, view on service flexibility and efficiency. We analyze to what extent legitimacy generated at the output side of the political system (or by performance) supports more traditional forms of legitimacy based in democratic representation and accountability or, conversely, whether output based legitimacy poses a challenge to the latter. Focus is on the consequences of public management reform and governance on public suppor t for traditional forms of input based democratic government.