PhD-Profil: Vemund Vestre

This projects aims to investigate the tensions between national and local levels of government within the Norwegian welfare state. To do so it will focus on the role state bureaucrats have in managing these tensions and seek to understand how bureaucrats as state representatives understand the role of local governments. At a fundamental level, my project asks the question: are state-local relations in practice supportive of local autonomy when it conflicts with national priorities?

Local governments are a core part of the Norwegian welfare system. In policy areas such as health care, child care and education they play an important role in providing welfare services. Most of these local welfare tasks are delegated by the national government and national laws and regulations determine which services and the quality of services municipalities are required to provide. Municipalities do not have unlimited resources and increasing requirements from the national government can in effect limit what a municipality is able to prioritize on its own.

The role of the municipality has changed throughout Norwegian political history, from an autonomous municipality with limited resources to an integrated part of the welfare state with limited autonomy (Flo, 2003). This history reveals a tension between formal autonomy and effective autonomy, affected by the resources a municipality has to pursue its goals. Norway follows a generalist model of local governments, meaning all governments have the same functional tasks and responsibility.

The local government system thus has to contend with inequalities in size and capacity between municipalities, from big cities to small rural places (NOU 2023)As important administrative actors and policy makers, bureaucrats are an essential part of the governance of welfare policies. They are non-elected, professional state actors assisting the elected government on policy matters and implementation. Theories of organizational theory, argue that bureaucratic behavior must be understood through socialization pressures in the organization they are employed in rather than as individual rational actors (Christensen and Lægreid 2018).