Knowledge, Influence and Accountability: A Study of Political‒Administrative Relations and Civil Servant Influence on Two Rural Swedish Citizen Dialogues

Abstract

One of the current challenges of democracy is the increasing complexity of governing and, consequently, increasing civil servant influence at the expense of elected representatives. This is also affected by what politician–civil servant relations look like and by contextual aspects, although knowledge about the extent and impact of this influence is selective. Thus, this paper examines civil servants’ influence in evidently complex and resource-intensive processes by conducting a study of citizen dialogues in two rural Swedish municipalities. Expectedly, traits of this context can be recognised throughout the results. The findings point to the position of the involved civil servants as important to the level of civil servant influence in these processes. They further suggest that process complexity may contribute to amplifying already high civil servant influence. However, they also confirm expectations about civil servants’ dispositions towards political legitimate processes, which appeared to dampen the impact of the skewed influence. I conclude that, with these contextual preconditions, the studied form of process can potentially increase civil servant influence. I also argue that, given the size and form of this study, this highlights the need for further studies in local rural contexts and local politician–civil servant relations.