Conflict as driver of pluricentric coordination

Introduction

The Danish municipal government reform in 2007 imposed radical changes in the formal institutional set-up of regional governance and planning in Denmark. Previously, regional governance was formed in line with a traditional model of governance characterized by clear divisions of powers and responsibilities between different sub-national levels of governance. The Counties had certain powers and responsibilities, while the municipalities had others. The reform introduced what has been denoted a pluricentric model of governance (Kersbergen and Waarden, 2004) that gave five new regional governments that were replacing the old Counties, and the municipalities in each region shared power to and responsibility for governing health policy and regional development and planning. In order to function well, this model called for an extensive degree of coordination and collaboration between the two levels of governance.

The Danish municipal reform follows a wider trend in Western representative democracies in general and in regional governance and planning in particular (Ansell, 2000; Baldersheim and Øgård, 2012; Pedersen et al., 2011; Tewdwr-Jones and McNiell, 2000). In recent years, both governance researchers and planning theorists have contributed considerably to enhancing our understanding of how pluricentric coordination takes place. Both of these strands of research, however, have a problematic approach to conflicts in pluricentric coordination. Some researchers tend to overlook the role of conflicts in pluricentric coordination processes altogether (Davidoff and Reiner, 1962; March and Olsen, 1989, 1995; Scharpf, 1994). Others view conflicts as a barrier to coordination that must be overcome through skilful mediation, facilitation and negotiation practices or neutralized through the spread of a strong ethics of difference and diversity (Agranoff and McGuire, 2003; Allmendinger, 2002; Booher and Innes, 2002; Forrester, 2007, 2009; Gray, 1989; Sager, 1994; Healey, 1997; Keast et al., 2007). With a few exceptions (Pløger, 2004), the research overlooks that conflicts play a productive role in promoting coordination. Although ubiquitous, this productive role is particularly visible in the wake of radical institutional change where conflicts serve a key role in the shaping of the new normal though gradual processes of institutionalization of shared interpretations and practices.

The aim of this article is to argue that conflicts play a key role in promoting coordination in governance and planning because they function as a necessary medium for a more or less radical destabilization of a sedimented institutional order as well as for the gradual institutionalization of new patterns of thought and action. The argument takes departure in the interpretive turn in the social sciences that stresses the impact of narratives and discourses on the construction of subjectivity (Allmendinger, 2001; Flyvbjerg, 2002; Hajer and Wagenaar, 2003; Hillier, 2002; Pløger, 2004; Smith, 2008). I do not use the interpretive turn, however, to point out – and celebrate – the open-ended character of governance and planning (Allmendinger, 2001) or the prospects for coping with difference in an agonist or otherwise civilized manor (Pløger, 2004). Rather, I argue that interpretative battles serve a key role in constructing the kinds of temporal closures that make possible collective action in general and pluricentric coordination in particular. The productive role of battles of interpretation and other conflict in the gradual formation of new world views, relationships and practices is particularly visible in the wake of a radical government reform that destabilizes sedimented images of who is to decide what, where and when. A case study of the interplay between the Danish regions and the municipalities after the 2007 municipal government reform is well suited for this purpose.

The article starts out by defining the concept of pluricentric coordination and by drawing a distinction between political, administrative and task-related coordination in order to show the variation in the degree to which each of these forms of coordination have been destabilized by the government reform. Then, I explain to what extent and how the reform has transformed regional governance into an arena for pluricentric coordination between regional and municipal governments in the areas of health policy and regional development and planning. I present the results of an in-depth longitude study of pluricentric coordination in one of the five regions, Region Zealand, over a period of 4 years after the reform was passed and conclude with a discussion of the findings and their theoretical and practical implications for the role of conflicts in the gradual institutionalization of a new pluricentric governance arena. The research results from Region Zealand are supplemented with results from studies of the impact of the reform in the other regions.

Public governance as pluricentric coordination

Although social science theorists propose different conceptualizations to describe current developments in the form and functioning of public governance, the main message is largely the same: rather than being the result of autonomous decisions made by singular public authorities, public governance is increasingly an outcome of a complex interplay between plural, operationally autonomous but interdependent actors. Joint-up government (Pollitt, 2003), collaborative public management (Agranoff and McGuire, 2003), network governance (Sørensen and Torfing, 2007), multilevel governance (Enderlein et al., 2010) and collaborative planning (Healey, 1997; Hillier, 2002) are some of the terms that have been used as signifiers for this emerging type of interactive governance (Torfing et al., 2012).

The term pluricentric coordination chosen for this article is inspired by Kersbergen and Waarden (2004) who introduce it to signal the emergence of a model of governance in which multiple authoritative centres of power interact in competitive as well as collaborative ways in their endeavours to realize desired governance outcomes. Pluricentrism is well suited as a term for this kind of interdependency-driven inter-organizational interplay between different public authorities – in this case, regions and municipalities. The relationship between the regions and the municipalities neither takes the form of a unitary system of sovereign rule in which there is a clear hierarchical relationship between different levels of governance nor does it take the form of a federal system where each level have full autonomy and authority to decide certain matters. Instead, they share governing powers and responsibilities to the effect that the job can only be done through extensive coordination between them. As such, I define pluricentric coordination as the process through which two or more public authorities – in this case regions and municipalities – share the powers to and responsibility for certain governance tasks.

Pluricentric coordination processes are often ridden by conflict. Although there may be Zen moments characterized by seamless mutual adjustments where everybody benefits and no one loose, there is a general tendency in the social sciences to underestimate the level of conflict involved in coordination. Just consider Max Weber’s (1971 [1920]) bureaucratic model of governance, Elinor Ostrom’s (1990) governing of the commons, Fritz Scharpf’s (1994) conceptualizations of positive and negative coordination, John Rawl’s (1971) normative theory of justice and Jürgen Habermas’ (1989) deliberative theory of democracy. They either overlook the role of conflict or view it as a key objective to develop institutional set-ups or frames of mind that either mediate or neutralize such conflicts.

In effect, little attention has been given to the productive role of conflicts in promoting coordination. This also accounts for governance theory and planning theory. They tend not to consider to what extent conflicts contribute to constructing and reconstructing the institutional conditions needed to coordinate. In light of this critique, this article sets out to show that conflicts play a key role in the gradual formation of the institutional set-up that makes pluricentric governance possible. Taking departure in neo-institutional and discursive understandings of change (Smith, 2008; Sørensen, 2013), the de facto ability of a radical government reform to produce coordination does not only depend on the successful installation of a new formal regulatory framework, it also requires a transformation and diffusion of new world views, relationships and practices that will motivate and guide actors to engage in a new kind of coordination. The crux of the matter is that conflict is a necessary ingredient in parting with tradition as well as in constructing a new perception of normality. It is through conflicts that the old mind maps, relationships and day-to-day practices are questioned and pushed aside and new ways of perceiving reality are articulated and become sedimented as a new way of governing. Without conflict, tradition will tend to prevail despite the new formal institutional set-up brought about by a reform.

Although the transformation of the world views, relationships and practices of actors is particularly needed in times of change, such changes are an ingrained and permanent activity in governance. Governance institutions are constantly changing even when they are not made subject to radical reform. In between moments of radical change, they are constantly reconstructing themselves in a permanent incremental endeavour to adjust to shifting circumstances and governance ambitions (March and Olsen, 1995). As such, conflicts have a productive role to play at all times, although it is most outspoken and visible in the wake of radical change as in the case of the Danish municipal government reform.

Now, what kind of conflicts can play a productive role in promoting coordination? I shall point to two types of conflicts: conflicts of interest and conflicts of interpretation. Conflicts of interest result in coordination when the interested parties bargain and negotiate solutions that produce mutual adjustments or shared action. This kind of coordination is conditioned by the strategic calculations of the involved actors about how they can best benefit from adjusting their actions in light of the given circumstances. However, coordination also takes place through conflicts of interpretation referring to fights between the involved actors about how to interpret and implement the regulatory framework within which they interact and, in particular, what it has to say about how, where and when decisions are to be made and by whom. Conflicts of interpretation lead to coordination when the involved actors and levels of governance gradually begin to act with reference to the same interpretation of the regulatory framework. What is special about conflicts of interpretation – as opposed to conflicts of interest – is that they are rarely decided through explicit and direct decision-making. Although they are indirectly influenced by battles of interest, they tend to emerge unnoticed and step by step and take over as a sort of unspoken condition of being that normalizes certain patterns of meaning and action.

It goes without saying that not all conflicts of interest and conflicts of interpretation result in coordination. This is only the case when conflicts add to the formation and sedimentation of a new normality that leads to coordination. I do not challenge the view that coordination to a considerable degree depends on the neutralization of conflicts. I merely seek to point out that conflicts are an important step on the way to creating governance arenas that are capable of producing pluricentric coordination. This recognition is not least important for public authorities and others engaged in promoting coordination in processes of public governance, as it points to the fact that rather than seeking to moderate, neutralize or avoid conflicts, it can be relevant to stage necessary conflicts in ways that accommodate a destabilization of existing patterns of thought and behavior as well as a formation and sedimentation of new world views role perceptions and patterns of action.

Political, administrative and task-related coordination

Public governance involves political, administrative and task-related coordination. These are three very different forms of coordination. Political coordination concerns the alignment of political decisions made by different political actors; administrative coordination points to the adjustment of procedures for preparing, implementing and evaluating policies; and task-related coordination relies on a streamlining of the processes through which public (and private) agencies carry out public tasks and deliver public services. Perceptions of what political, administrative and task-related coordination entail and how it is obtained change over time and can be spurred by government reforms. However, as suggested by historical and sociological neo-institutional theory (Pierson, 1994; Powell and DiMaggio, 1991), institutionalized patterns of interaction can be slow to change because they are a product not only of formal regulations but also of sedimented role perceptions and tacit wisdom that tend to resist change. Seen from this perspective, a key theme to be investigated in this article is to what extent conflicts contribute to a destabilization of well-established role perceptions and sedimented patterns of interaction among those involved in political, administrative and task-related coordination, respectively, as well as to the formation and sedimentation of new role images that are compatible with pluricentric modes of governing.

We begin by looking at the conditions for pluricentric political coordination. There is a considerable persistency in the traditional image of elected politicians as sovereign kings in their own kingdom. The reformulation of politicians as a board of directors launched by the New Public Management (NPM) reform programme in the late 1980s consolidated this image of politicians as sovereign rulers (Bouckaert and Pollitt, 2004; Hood, 1991; Osborne and Gaebler, 1993). While this image of what it means to be a politician fits well into traditional government models, it is incompatible with pluricentric models of political coordination that call for a much more collaborative form of political coordination. Politicians who cling to a traditional role perception are therefore likely to find it difficult to engage themselves in pluricentric political coordination.

Recent changes in the perception of what administrative coordination is and how it should be performed are among other things driven by a shift from a legality-centred to an efficiency- and effectiveness-centred model of administrative coordination (Kettle, 2002; Osborne and Gaebler, 1993; Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2000). This shift in perspective has changed the role perception of public administrators from servants to the law to strategic managers in relentless pursuit of efficient and effective governance outcomes. In NPM, the main concern for the strategic managers was on enhancing intra-organizational performance. This task definition is in stark contrast, however, to the call for inter-organizational efficiency and effectiveness in pluricentric systems of government. It is therefore likely that public administrators will find it difficult to function in a pluricentric context where they are expected to enhance inter-organizational rather than intra-organizational performance.

The propensity to focus on outcomes rather than formal rules and legal procedures has also transformed the conditions for task-related coordination in ways that challenge the role perception of public employees. Traditionally, public employees were viewed as experts with a more or less autonomous right and capacity to define quality, but this role perception was confronted by the NPM programme that underlined what was not only defined by processional standards but also by politics and levels of user satisfaction. The role as autonomous experts was exchanged with the role as responsive communicators who are capable of and willing to explain and justify their actions in the eyes of political superiors and those using the services they provide (Torfing et al., 2012; Vigoda, 2000). While this role perception is strictly related to the quality produced in the individual public agency, a system of pluricentric coordination means that the public employees must consider and take responsibility for the quality of services that are not necessarily produced by their particular public agency. Public employees with a strong intra-agency role perception are likely to find it difficult to engage in and take responsibility for the quality of public services provided elsewhere.

In light of the above description of the clash between traditional role images of politicians, public administrators and public employees, it is clear that the institutionalization of a pluricentric governance arena calls for the development of new role images. The demand on the politicians to change their role perception tends to be the most manifest, however, because they do not have a shared purpose and standard for their governance practice across levels of governance as do the public administrators and public employees. The public administrators have a common purpose in enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of the public sector, while the public employees share a number of professional quality standards and concern for user satisfaction. It is therefore to be expected that the politicians will find it most challenging to adapt to pluricentric forms of coordination.

The municipal government reform

The municipal government reform of 2007 established a new regional level of governance with strong pluricentric features. Five new regional governments were set up to share the responsibility for governing health care and regional planning and development with the municipalities located within their respective territories. This model of governance is radically different from the former model that was characterized by a clear and detailed division of powers and tasks between the old Counties and the municipalities. As such, the government reform signals a transition from a traditional sovereign model of government to a pluricentric model of governance. From being sovereign rulers of a well-defined turf of governance tasks, the two sub-national levels of governance are transformed into interdependent co-producers of governance outcomes brought about through political, administrative and task-related coordination processes.

While the reform does not establish a formal framework for promoting administrative and task-related pluricentric coordination, it provides three formal pluricentric arenas for political coordination between each of the five regional governments and the municipalities located in that region: (1) The Municipality Contact Committee (MCC), composed of the Chair of the Regional Council (RC) and the Mayors from each municipality, is assigned to coordinate political decisions of relevance to both parties; (2) The Health Coordination Committee (HCC) composed of regional and municipal politicians coordinates the provision of health services; and (3) The Regional Growth Council (RGC) composed of regional and municipal politicians and different stakeholders is responsible for formulating a business strategy and for distributing state funding to public and private regional actors that seek to promote regional growth. The reform programme offers little advice about how these political coordination processes are to take place. Therefore, there is ample opportunity for the involved political actors to engage themselves in intensive conflicts of interpretation over the precise meaning, purpose and functioning of the three pluricentric coordination arenas.

In addition to these formal arenas for political coordination, the reform triggered the establishment of an informal ‘Municipal Council’ (MC) in each region composed of Mayors and selected political leaders from the municipalities. The MCs were formed by the National Association of Danish Municipalities (KL) in an attempt to establish a counter power to the five regional governments (Sørensen et al., 2011). The MCs served as a forum for political coordination of regional policies between the municipalities that allowed them to stand united in confrontations with the regional governments. The MCs are included in the analysis despite their informal status because they proved to become key players in the five new regional governance arenas. The importance gained by the MCs bear witness to the influence that actors and governance forums obtain in pluricentric governance arenas is not only explained by their formal powers and authorizations but also by the extent to which they are capable of adapting to new circumstances in ways that enable them to participating effectively in the turf battles that leads to the normalization and routinization of world views, relationships and practices.

It is noteworthy that the government reform does not establish formal forums and procedures for ensuring the high level of administrative and task-related coordination that is needed in pluricentric governance arenas. The assumption behind the reform seems to be that ensuring political coordination will more or less automatically pave the way for administrative and task-related coordination. The failure to address the question of how to ensure administrative and task-related coordination between the regions and the municipalities is particularly problematic in relation to the provision of health-care services. In this area, the need for administrative and task-related coordination is considerable. Administrative coordination is not least called for in relation to the formulation of a yearly health-care contract between regions and municipalities that settles the price, which the latter must pay to the regions for their citizens’ use of different hospital services. The extensive need for task-related coordination is caused by patients travelling in large numbers between the primary health-care institutions (homes for the elderly and rehabilitation centres), which are governed by the municipalities, and the secondary health-care institutions (hospitals), which are governed by the regions. The success of these patient travels depends heavily on the ability of street-level employees to coordinate their activities and services across institutional divides. Although the need for administrative and task-related coordination is largest in the health-care area, it is also considerable in the area of regional planning and development. Apart from political issues relating to the shared responsibility for formulating a regional development plan and a regional business strategy, these plans and strategies tend to call for the coordination of a variety of highly complex and technical matters in the areas of infrastructure, environment and city planning, which are to be settled and coordinated by regional and municipal administrators and street-level professionals.

Since the reform does not explicate how the administrative coordination between the regions and municipalities is to take place, different models have been developed in the five regions. In some regions, a number of informal pluricentric administrative forums have been formed, while in others regions, such as Region Zealand which is the main object of analysis in this article, the regional administration has taken on the task of functioning as the secretariat for the MCC, the HCC and the RGC. In effect, a number of informal administrative networks have been formed that are not biased by a partial institutional belonging (Fotel, 2011; Sehested et al., 2010). The lack of formal guidelines and procedures for ensuring task-related coordination, on its side, has also left matters more or less in the hands of informal networks between street-level professionals from different institutions, of which many have a long history and have functioned as a backbone in ensuring task-related coordination processes between street-level professionals long before the reform was in place (Nielsen, 2010).

In sum, the government reform establishes a regional pluricentric governance arena in which regions and municipalities share the responsibility for governing health-care provision and regional planning and development. The extent to which the two sub-national levels of government are able to lift this task depends on the degree to which they are able to ensure a high level of political, administrative and task-related coordination between them. While the reform formed pluricentric governance arenas for political coordination, it did not establish forums and procedures for administrative and task-related coordination. In light of this situation, it must be expected that the rate of success in providing pluricentric coordination will be higher in the area of political coordination than in administrative and task-related coordination. The question is whether the role perceptions and sedimented patterns of interaction described earlier on or the formal institutional framing of the different coordination processes will prove to have the largest impact on the degree of political, administrative and task-related coordination produced in the new pluricentric governance arenas. While the sedimented role perceptions and patterns of interaction suggest that political coordination might prove to be more difficult than administrative and task-related coordination, the formal institutional framing suggests the reverse. This question is best answered through empirical enquiry.

The difficult birth of a pluricentric governance arena

Since 2007, a number of research projects have contributed important knowledge about the impact of the government reform in general and the interplay between the regions and the municipalities in particular (Christoffersen and Klausen, 2009; Højmark and Tanghøj, 2008; Mouritzen, 2010; Nielsen, 2010; Sehested et al., 2010; Sørensen et al., 2011). The following analysis draws on insights from these studies that help to illuminate the formation and consolidation of the five new regional governance arenas and the processes through which they produce different forms of coordination. The analysis will pay specific attention to the developments in Region Zealand over a period of 4 years form late 2006 to early 2010 aiming to map the dynamic interplay between the many actors involved in the formation of the new pluricentric regional governance arena.

The data includes around 80 interviews with regional and municipal politicians, administrators and street-level professionals, 70 observations of a broad variety of formal and informal meetings, seminars and workshops that played a role in the many political, administrative and task-related coordination processes between Region Zealand and the 17 municipalities, and piles of documents such as policy briefs, minutes from meetings and newspaper articles. The results of this in-depth case study are documented in detail elsewhere (Sørensen et al., 2011). The analysis below presents the main results of the case study of Region Zealand and other relevant research mapping the interplay between regions and municipalities in the new pluricentric governance arenas. First, I analyse the early coordination processes that led to the formation of the pluricentric governance arenas with a specific focus on the intense turf battles that took place in this phase and describe how these battles were gradually brought to rest. Then, I describe how these conflicts contribute to the gradual formation of a pluricentric governance arena.

The research results from different studies of the five regional governance arenas all attest to the fact that the willingness of the regions and the municipalities to coordinate their actions was low in the first years after the reform was implemented but has grown somewhat over time (Christoffersen and Klausen, 2009; Sehested, 2010; Sørensen et al., 2011). The unwillingness to coordinate their governance initiatives as intended in the reform was particularly outspoken among the regional and municipal politicians. In Region Zealand, the resentment was strongest among the municipal politicians (Rasmussen and Sørensen, 2011; Sehested, 2011). Not least, the MCC and the RGC were ridden by intense conflicts between regional and municipal politicians (Fotel, 2011). These conflicts were among other things surfacing as a fierce debate about the role of the chairman, which was taken by the chairman of the RC. A member of the RGC states,

We want the debate in the RGC to run so that the debate is not controlled by the chairman. […] There are strong actors present and they do not only want to talk with the chairman. They want to talk with each other.

While this respondent views the chairman of the regional council as too dominating, a regional politician in the RGC feels that the regional politicians are marginalized:

It is a mixed experience to sit in the RGC. There are a lot of Mayors form the municipalities here, and we are only three from the region, so we are a minority. This means that we can come with a mandate from the RC, and then the municipal Mayors say: ‘forget it – we cannot accept it’. This is not very pleasant. You can feel it all the time: They are worried that we give the municipalities the responsibility for tasks that are our responsibility.

As this statement signals, the turf battles between regional and municipal politicians are intense and there is little trust. These turf battles both involved conflicts of interest and conflicts of interpretation. The conflicts of interest were, among other things, related to financial issues regarding the sum that the municipalities were to pay for services provided by the regions, while the conflicts of interpretation were founded on disagreements about how, where and when shared decisions were to be made, and who were to make them. One example of the former concerned the payment for hospital treatments, while an example of the latter is a debate over whether the region or the municipalities should host and represent regional interests in Brussels.

The conflicts of interpretation were particularly outspoken in the area of regional planning and development. Among several disputes, the parties fought over whether the intention behind the reform was that the regional development plan should be produced ‘bottom-up’ with reference to the development plans formulated in each of the municipalities, or ‘top-down’ by the regional council (Sehested, 2011; Sehested et al., 2010). A member of the RGC describes these conflicts as ‘an ongoing discussion about whether the municipalities belong to the region or it is the other way around’. Speaking in favour of the latter, the chairman of the MC in Region Zealand stated,

The reform gives us [the municipalities] a central role, and the MCs task is to reduce the Region’s influence to what is intended in the reform. They [the regional government] must not regain the positions of the old Counties. The regional development plan is redundant and a double work.

This respondent simply views the regions as redundant in the area of regional planning and development.

The political conflicts of interpretation were fewer and more moderate in the area of health-care provision. A reason for this seems to be that many of the coordination tasks were interpreted as administrative and task-related rather than as political. Therefore, they were left in the hands of administrators and street-level bureaucrats who were less in conflict with each other than the politicians (Nielsen, 2011). The political conflicts of interpretation that did take place were mostly related to the question of how to distribute powers and responsibilities for prophylactic and preventive initiatives as the reform was particularly unclear on this point and because there was little precedence in these relatively new policy areas. An example of a conflict of interpretation in health policy is a dispute over whether or not the regional government were to host a conference on healthy living or whether it was a municipal task.

Although the intense turf battles that took place in the first years after the reform created a considerable degree of turbulence and made pluricentric coordination between the regions and the municipalities difficult, the conflicts also contributed to creating a step-by-step institutionalization of the new pluricentric governance arenas. Hence, both the conflicts of interest and the conflicts of interpretation led to a gradual sedimentation of certain ways of working together and talking about things that made it easier to coordinate activities between regions and municipalities. The chairman of the RGCs and the MCC gradually began to run the meetings in a less authoritarian fashion, and the relationship between the regional and municipal actors changed over time. A member of the RGC states, ‘What has been taken place over these four years is a change in perceptions. There is a different atmosphere – a desire to collaborate in order to develop a shared policy. It is very encouraging’. A member of the RGC’s support staff describes the change as a gradual growth in the level of trust:

The RGC has gradually developed into a trustworthy collaborative arena. There is much more trust between the municipalities and the region even though the basic conflicts are still there. In the beginning the relationship was one of competition. The start was competition but now the conflicts have been pushed in the back ground.

The enhanced capacity for collaboration is not so much a result of the settlement of conflicts as a gradual development of a shared image of how conflicts are to be played out and by whom. The growing level of trust grows out of the emergence of a shared image of how coordination is to take place rather than out of any form of consensus about what is to be decided. A regional politician points out that what is going on is not least a change in the politicians’ role perceptions:

The power and authority we had before is no longer there. We are gradually adjusting to the new situation – maturing. This is what happens to people. From knowing that when we made decisions it ‘became law’ so to say, we have moved to a situation where the decision has a different character. You have to go out and make agreements with a lot of other actors (Sørensen and Christensen, 2011).

This politician has gradually recognized the need to give up the image of politicians as sovereign rulers of a given turf in favour of a more negotiated form of governance that implies coordination and collaboration with politicians at other levels of governance. This recognition was gained the hard way through intense conflicts of interpretation as well as conflicts of interest with municipal politicians. The conflicts resulted in a gradual remodelling of the politicians’ view of how a pluricentric political system works and what strategies to apply in seeking for political influence. Over time, this new mindset led to the sedimentation of a pluricentric governance arena that guided the interaction between regional and municipal politicians. Gradually, the urge for closure took over, and a step-by-step new temporary political order with new role perceptions was established that produced some degree of regularity and routine in an otherwise weakly institutionalized pluricentric governance arena with a low coordination capacity.

The role of conflicts in enhancing pluricentric coordination

Because of the complexity of political and social processes, we should be cautious when trying to explain the course of events in governance processes in the wake of government reforms and other disruptions. Keeping this in mind, I will point out how some of the intense conflicts in the beginning contributed to the transformation of the regional governance arena from a traditional arena of divided jurisdictions to a pluricentric governance arena. The analysis will mainly focus on the changes in the relationship between the political actors, where the pressure for change and the conflicts were most intense, but will also consider the fact that the conflicts were less intense among those involved in administrative and task-related coordination processes. The variation in the level of conflict related to the enhancement of the different types of pluricentric coordination is an important indicator of the connection between the level of conflict and the character of the change that is taking place in the world views, relationships and practices of those involved in a coordination process.

At a general level of explanation, one can say that actors who expect a reform to result in a loss of power will stick to tradition, while those who expect to gain power will be more inclined to welcome change. The respective reactions of the regions and the municipalities are a case in point: the regions feared a loss of power and started out by trying to maintain business as usual, while the municipalities seized the situation as a window of opportunity to shift the balance of power between regions and municipalities to their own advantage. These opposite reactions resulted in sever battles of interpretation regarding who was meant to decide what, where and when.

The attempt on the side of the municipalities to take over as the dominating actor on the regional political scene was among other things inspired by strong and persistent rumours stating that the regional governments would get a short life (Baggesen and Christiansen, 2008; Blom-Hansen et al., 2012; Christoffersen and Klausen, 2009). The opinion was that strong political forces in and around the government wanted to close down the new regions and that they would do so within 8 years. In the first round of general interviews conducted in 2007, this statement was repeated by almost all the respondents including regional politicians and administrators, and it was clear from the interviews that this interpretation of the situation heavily affected their self-confidence. The low self-confidence of the regional actors triggered initial attempts to cling to business as usual in their relationship with the municipalities. The municipalities on their side saw the circumstances as a long desired opportunity not only to get the upper hand in relation to the regional government but also for pushing for close down of the regions. In that sense, the rumour undermined the feeling of interdependency needed to motivate the municipalities’ desire to contribute to the successful institutionalization of a pluricentric governance arena. The main priority of the municipalities became to promote a situation that would speed up the close down of the regions and a division of their tasks between the national government and the municipalities. Municipal attempts to take over tasks from the regions was particularly manifest in the area of regional planning and development where KL – the Danish Association of Municipalities – in 2008 tried to persuade the national government to transfer all authority over regional planning and development to the municipalities (Sehested, 2011). Although the national government was not persuaded to do so, the event did little to accommodate the creation of a collaborative relationship between regions and municipalities in the early years after the reform. In that sense, the early conflicts can be seen as an attempt by regions as well as by the municipalities to stay in a traditional frame of mind, where what is at stake are battles over sovereign territory rather than participation in conflict-ridden co-governance. The regions sought to limit their loss of turf while the municipalities attempted to enlarge their kingdom as much as possible. The events helped to clarify that none of these strategies were feasible.

The conflict described above was further intensified by a long-lasting antagonistic relationship between the old Counties and the municipalities, which was particularly outspoken between KL and the DR, the Danish Association of Regions (before 2007 the Association of Danish Counties). This antagonism became a huge obstacle to pluricentric coordination between regions and municipalities in the first years and was a major reason for the formation of the MC (Sehested et al., 2010). These informal platforms for pluricentric coordination between the municipalities in each region became a cornerstone in the gradual adjustment to a pluricentric political system that, although it excluded the regions, was a training ground for exercising politics in a pluricentric political system. The driving force behind pluricentric policy coordination in the MCs was the antagonistic relationship to the regions that created a strong interdependency between the municipalities. The motto was as follows: ‘We have to stick together in order to fight the regions’. As such, the conflicts between the regions and the municipalities became a powerful motor for change in the informal relationship between the municipalities within the region.

The formal institutionalization of arenas for pluricentric coordination between regional and pluricentric politicians played an important role in staging conflicts of interest and conflicts of interpretation in ways that over time led to a gradual formation of a new pluricentric governance arena and the development of new role perceptions among the politicians. Although the MCC, the HCC and the RGC appeared as dysfunctional in the first years, the conflicts they staged gradually resulted in the shaping of a new set of rules of the game that made coordination between the attending parties possible. Without these formal arenas for political coordination, it is likely that the politicians would have stuck to their traditional role perceptions. This was simply not possible in the long run due to the pressure on them to produce shared policies in times of huge political challenges. As such, the establishment of formal arenas for pluricentric coordination in the wake of change appears to be crucial in promoting coordination between antagonistic actors because the arenas force them to stay together long enough to strive for a new temporal closure that makes action possible and normalizes governance processes.

In this light, it is relevant to consider the fact that the reform did not establish formal arenas for administrative and task-related coordination between regions and municipalities as well as the fact that the level of conflict was much lower than among the politicians (Mehdic, 2011; Nielsen, 2011; Sehested, 2011). This is partly due to the fact that informal pluricentric coordination arenas were already in place, and partly because the call for changes in the role perceptions among the involved actors was less outspoken among administrators and street-level bureaucrats than among the politicians. Informal coordination networks had for years played a role in ensuring administrative and task-related coordination between regional and municipal actors in different government branches and agencies. This informal pluricentric networking was motivated by the interdependency related to ensuring efficient, effective and high-quality public services. This feeling of interdependency was conditioned by a shared perception of the task and the larger purpose of the coordination processes between public administrators and public employees in the regions and the municipalities.

It should be noted, however, that the tradition for pluricentric coordination based on a shared perception of tasks and purposes and organized in informal networks appeared to be more outspoken in the area of health policy than in the area of regional planning and development. This might contribute to explaining why the conflicts were a bit more intense between those involved in regional planning and development (Nielsen, 2011; Sehested, 2011). The reform involved larger changes in the latter area than in the former and triggered a need for conflicts that destabilized the past and shapes the future here through an intense and highly conflict-ridden process of innovating new ways of linking municipal and regional planning and development strategies.

In sum, it can be said that the intense conflicts in the early years played a key role in ensuring that the involved actors were forced to depart from traditional world views, role perceptions and practices and in shaping a new pluricentric governance arena. The conflicts were most intense among the politicians because they had to change their ways more than the other actors. The initial conflicts contributed to the gradual sedimentation of a new pluricentric set of rules and procedures that stopped being questioned. Rather than concluding that the actors were moving towards consensus, the case study shows that a new institutional frame for dealing with conflicts was moving into place. The conflicts of interpretation became fewer, but the conflicts of interest prevailed. They are, however, increasingly played out in accordance with institutionalized rituals that process them through an effective coordination mechanism that spells out how the conflicts are to be settled in ways that are in congruence with a pluricentric coordination logic. This understanding of the role of institutionalization should clarify that what produces coordination is not so much bargaining, negotiation or consensus as it is a product of the sedimented rules and procedures which guide these debates. This does not mean that there is only structure and no policy. Such rules and procedures are always in transition, and conflicts of interpretation are a permanent feature of governance processes. It is our capacity to exploit such conflicts to develop new rules and procedures in light of change that determines our capacity to promote coordination.

Seen in this light, it can be said that the pluricentric governance arenas in the Danish regions have consolidated themselves, although they are still shaky. A temporary order has been established that for the time being stabilizes the shared coordination processes that take place between regions and municipalities, but the political conflicts of interpretation can resurface in the event that the future of the pluricentric governance arena is called into question by the KL or other powerful actors in and around the national government or if the interdependency between the regions and the municipalities is called into question in other ways.

Conclusion

As exemplified with the Danish municipal government reform of 2007, and extensively argued in recent strands of governance and planning theory, the governing of society increasingly depends on the ability of different levels of governance to coordinate their political, administrative and task-related actions. The theoretical endeavours to understand how this pluricentric form of governance is produced in governance research and planning theory tend to either overlook the role of conflicts in coordination processes or view them as a disruptive force that must be modified or neutralized. The failure to give full justice to the role of conflicts in promoting public governance and planning is rooted in a failure to bring together important insights from governance theory and planning theory, respectively. Neo-institutional sociological governance theory (March and Olsen, 1995) recognizes the key role played by sedimented patterns of thought and action, while post-structuralist planning theory focuses on discursive dislocations and hegemonic battles for power (Flyvbjerg, 2002; Pløger, 2004). By bringing these two understandings of collective action together, it becomes clear that coordination in governance and planning is basically an ongoing process of sedimentation, disruption and re-sedimentation that is a product of proactive strategic moves initiated by the participating actors as well as by reactive attempts to adjust to contextual changes. Conflicts are the medium through which the actors gradually accept the need to depart from the safe haven of well-established ways, and a medium for shaping a new institutionalized set of rules of the game that the involved actors view as normal. Sociological neo-institutionalist governance researchers have tended to overplay the role of institutionalization and thereby not fully analysed the role of conflicts in the ongoing reconstruction of the institutional framing of governance processes. Planning researchers on their side have tended to downplay the role of institutions, to the effect that coordination is viewed as an outcome of consensus-making, negotiation and bargaining resulting from either hard-nosed battles of interest or ethical attempts to provide space for difference.

Thereby, planning researchers overlook the fact that these coordination processes are most of the time guided by sedimented world views, relationships and practices that no one put into question, but which nevertheless have a crucial impact on governance outcomes. Although these guidelines are constantly reshaped in and through the ongoing coordination practices and the battles of interest they imply, they are more than anything results of the battles of interpretation that take place in times of radical change as is the case in the wake of a major government reform.

The productive role of conflicts in the ongoing shaping and reshaping of the institutional conditions for political, administrative and task-related coordination is apparent in the case of the formation of a regional governance arena after the Danish government reform in 2007. The analysis shows that the initial conflicts between the involved parties played an important role in forcing the actors, who were all reluctant to change their patterns of thought and action, to comprehend and accept that they were players on a pluricentric governance arena and that they needed to act in new ways to accomplish their tasks and reach their goals. The analysis also testifies that the conflicts diminished over time not so much because the parties reached agreements, but because the conflicts led to the institutionalization of a new road map for how things are to be done and by whom. Furthermore, the analysis shows that the conflicts were most intense among the politicians because they were the ones who have to change their world views, role perceptions and practices the most in order to be able to function on a pluricentric governance arena. This process of change was accommodated by a new set of formal arenas for pluricentric policy coordination that promoted dialogue that would not have taken place otherwise because of the antagonistic relationship between the regional and municipal politicians. The transition of the traditional political mode of governance was also accommodated by the informal network arenas that were formed between the municipal politicians. These networks appeared as sufficient because the municipal politicians had a shared enemy to bring them together. The important role of informal networks in promoting pluricentric coordination was also apparent in promoting administrative and task-related coordination between regions and municipalities, and the fact that such networks had been in place for a long time explains why the level of conflict was comparatively lower. When changes are few, the reason to engage in intense battles of interpretation is limited.

Then, what can planners and others seeking to promote pluricentric coordination learn from this study? When recognizing the productive role of conflict, it becomes clear that the staging of necessary conflicts becomes a key task in bringing together different levels of governance as well as other relevant stakeholders in a shared attempt to solve governance tasks. As such, the task is not only to take on the role as conflict mediator or facilitator in an attempt to help people dealing with difference in practice (Forrester, 2009), to propose different interpretations of reality (Flyvbjerg, 2002) or to establish spaces for agonist thought (Hillier, 2002, 2007; Pløger, 2004). A key aspect of governing and planning pluricentric coordination process is the design of formal and informal processes and arenas in which conflicts can be played out. In some situation, this task consists in ensuring that ongoing conflicts of interest contribute to the incremental adjustment of well-established rules of the game, while in other situations, the task consists in processing or even sometimes initiating conflicts of interpretation in ways that pave the way for the construction of a new institutional arena for pluricentric coordination in the wake of reform.