The aim in this course is to explore the link between welfare state organizations and democratic governance. Political legitimacy is a precondition for the sustainability of the welfare state, and this course addresses how recent welfare state reforms have affected political governance and the relationship between the state and its citizens. A key concept to develop an understanding of the relationship between welfare stat administration and democracy is accountability. Reforms of welfare state administration have often focused on the establishment of managerial accountability, neglecting the critical issue of how to maintain and develop mechanisms for political accountability. Converging trends towards New Public Management have affected the balance between managerial autonomy and political accountability across welfare sectors and countries. To what extent has it been possible to combine the various modes of accountability? In what way, for what and to whom are public managers in the various welfare services held accountable?
The course will cover the dynamics between accountability and reforms, and will assess these dynamics in different sectors of the welfare state. Moreover, the course has a distinct comparative ambition and will cover the different level of governance form a multi-level perspective and within an institutional and organizational theory framework.
Course responsible: Professor Per Lægreid, Department of administration and organization theory and University lecturer Paola Mattei, University of Oxford
Further information:PhD Course Bergen_October 2012