Inventing the regional level
– A study of the establishment of Region Mid-Jutland

From the preliminary stage to the election of the political management body

by Henrik Christoffersen and Kurt Klaudi Klausen, February 2006

• Report available in Danish

Summary

A political agreement reached by the Danish Parliament in June 2004 launched one of the most fundamental reforms of the welfare state in recent history, namely the Danish local government structural reform. At the regional level, the reform entails the amalgamation, by the beginning of 2007, of 14 counties across the nation and two municipalities in the Copenhagen Region to gradually form five new regions with fewer responsibilities and less autonomy. We have conducted a study of the first stage of the restructuring process in one of the five future regions, namely Region Mid-Jutland, which will include the Counties of Aarhus and Ringkøbing and parts of the Counties of Viborg and Vejle. The stage under study spans from the period when the political agreement was reached to November 2005, when a political Amalgamation Committee was elected as the first coherent political management body in the region.

The situation for Region Mid-Jutland is paradoxical in that the region is the result of an amalgamation which none of the parties were initially interested in. The four counties involved were all very satisfied with the status quo and the County of Aarhus, in particular, was quite large and sustainable in a regional context. In the light of the report from the Danish Local Government Restructuring Commission, the counties had all prepared for the amalgamation process during the spring of 2004, but they had envisaged and hoped for two regions in Mid-Jutland – East and West. Moreover, they had hoped for entirely different terms than those stipulated in the Government’s orders. Key areas of responsibility were taken from the regions compared to the original counties, both the counties and the State could interfere in the governing function, they no longer had the right to impose taxes and they did not have the same fiscal responsibility as the original counties. Furthermore, a political control was imposed on them, which defined an organisation and proposed new political roles that did not seem to make sense.

On the surface, the counties appear to be the losers in all aspects of the birth of the structural reform, and the strategic analysis of Region Mid-Jutland shows that they are still weakened and strained in several ways: they are surrounded by enemies and, at the same time, fighting in a variety of strategic arenas. The present study has examined eight key arenas for strategic management.

In the political arena, there was a fight, from the outset, for power, influence and responsibilities on the external lines. Key players on behalf of the municipalities quickly took the position that the goal for the municipalities was to “take as much as possible.” This was mainly expressed in relation to the locations of the counties’ social institutions. However, the regional project also took a hit when they did not succeed in getting the county mayor in the County of Viborg – a top candidate for the position as chairperson of the Regional Council for the interim growth forum in Region Mid-Jutland – elected. Instead, a representative from the business community was elected, which served to underpin what the region can look forward to in terms of having to manoeuvre in a field of influential interested parties.

On the internal lines, the political battle for positions before the Preparation Committee/Regional Council election immediately centred around the relationship between the two social-democratic county mayors in the Counties of Aarhus and Viborg, respectively. And these two key players reached their own agreement on the general terms. This internal political clarification consequently enabled Region Mid-Jutland to push quite strongly the amalgamation process forward, thus giving the impression that the region had achieved the most results prior to the election of the Amalgamation Committee.

In the arena for consciousness-development and knowledge-production, it appeared to be a tremendous challenge just to motivate the choice of certain solutions above others. No one, externally or internally, knew beforehand how to define a region or the objective of the political project. Nor was there a natural identity to be found in the geographic boundaries. Furthermore, the consciousness-related restructuring process had to take place over a period of much more than a year without a coherent political management body having been elected and operationalised.

The arena for production is characterised by the fact that, within a limited period of time, a coherent organisation needs to be built up on a very large scale with more than 30,000 employees in a restructuring process that takes into account the necessity of secure operations throughout the process while at the same time leaving room for a future political project to unfold once a political management body takes office. The process of developing the new organisation had to be initiated immediately, which meant that it would take place, for the most part, on purely professional grounds where the political project initially considered professional qualifications only.

In the social and the cultural arenas, conflict and division would be expected in the clash between old units. The given terms for the structural reform ultimately expose key county staff groups to a fundamental sense of insecurity with regard to their future employment conditions, job descriptions, workplaces, etc. And the initial stages of the restructuring process within the Region, thus, need to take place before a decision is reached as to which staff members will even by kept on in the new project. Consequently, the implementation of new integration processes must necessarily take place under extremely difficult conditions.

The arena for the market will certainly play a more crucial role than has traditionally been the case. In the area of hospitals, there are signs of a more centralised control, with the individual units increasingly being assessed on their performance and on their standing in comparison to other providers. In the other regional task areas, the situation for the regions will be that other parties – municipalities, the business community, etc. – will assess the regional services with regard to the performance of tasks and on that basis determine which to support. The consciousness within the operating institutions of such an increase in market exposure will most certainly contain new dynamics, but it will also bring about new challenges relating to how to make a coherent regional organisation work.

In the arena for architecture and aesthetics, the inner contrasts within the regional project have to be balanced in a strategy in order give the project a physical and visual expression. The project must both embrace all parts of the new region and be close to the citizens, while at the same time having a significant bearing, which will somehow be imprinted on the consciousness of the general population. Decentralised administration units will be established, while a new Regional Council Hall is built as the first significant building project. And the project must also form – both internally and externally – new identities and identifications as a modern policy-making and service-providing unit.

Finally, in the arena of visions and trust, it has from the outset been an up-hill climb from a situation in which many – both among the staff and in society in general – were sceptical about the regions’ actual chances of surviving the first couple of election terms. As with the arena for architecture and aesthetics, the lack of a coherent political management body in the arena for visions and trust has been a weakness in the initial stage of the restructuring process.

As losers on all fronts, the task for the four counties was nonetheless to establish the new region. The central policy-makers and top public officials adapted remarkably quickly to the new challenge. After all, they were responsible for a large operating area and hospital system, for initiating regional development policy, for whatever was left of the social sector after the municipalities had taken what they wanted and, not least, for the more than 30,000 remaining employees.

In this situation, the responsible political and administrative leaders  had to invent a reason for their own existence, defining what a region is and should be, and then they had to spearhead the realisation process.

The first takes place in the arena for visions and trust and in the arena for consciousness-development and knowledge-production. The second involves all the other arenas, for when a large-scale amalgamation, such as the establishment of a region, takes place, it is an all-encompassing process. In other words, the stage was set for a relatively close interaction between the eight arenas. But they have not all been equally important the entire time. There may have been battles on all fronts at the same time, but the arenas have not all attracted the same amount of attention the entire time. The strategic attention had to be shifted from time to time. And that is where the outcome of the battle in the political arena has been decisive. This outcome might pave the way for shifting from a defensive to an offensive strategy.

In continuation of the strategic situational analysis described above, which highlighted the battle on all fronts, we also conducted a study of the restructuring process as it proceeded up to the end of 2005. One crucial aspect has been that certain common notions quickly developed, which served to govern the further process. We have called these notions "the process rationale". Part of the process rationale are notions of survival, equality, trust, consensus-orientation, secure operations, minimising insecurity as well as professionalism. The goal was to create the region and ensure its survival. And this was to be achieved with all parties being equal, which means trusting that the leading politicians and their top public officials can cooperate. Conflicts were to be handled so as to achieve a consensus, and the region was to demonstrate that it could do the job through secure operations. The staff was to be ensured good conditions by minimising insecurities, and the means was professionalism at all levels, especially at this stage, through professional management.

The political vision was a notion of and a belief in the idea that the region, as a politically governed organisation, could make a difference in the regional development – that the region belongs to the citizens, the business community and the municipalities – and is not just an organisation for the operation of the hospital system. On the other hand, another notion was that Region Mid-Jutland could help set political agendas that reached beyond the region and that the regional municipality as an operational unit, naturally, could do the job efficiently and professionally.

The special terms of the restructuring process, as stipulated in the local government structural reform legislation, meant that during the first stage of the restructuring process, there was no coherent elected political management body to formulate and articulate a political vision for the region. Consequently, regional politics during this stage were forced to function in an implicit system in which the counties' leading policy-makers – primarily the two county mayors elected for the Social-Democratic party and the two county mayors elected for the Liberal party – had to reach a common understanding of how and to what extent to operate. And giving the top administrative decision-makers the green light to push the restructuring process forward on professional terms became a critical part of the political rationale.

In this situation, it was crucial that there was an interest in and an attempt to attain political consensus, and that there was a strong trusting relationship between the political and the administrative leaders. These circumstances paved the way for a fast clarification of the distribution of responsibilities and of who would sit at the head of the table among the administrative decision-makers. In particular, the policy-makers assigned the responsibility for visualising the future structure and for organising the process to the management team comprising the county directors. In this way, these decisions, which would normally belong in the political arena, were shifted to the arena for production, where it was possible to make relatively depoliticised decisions based on and justified by professionalism and efficient operations. And this was crucial for the moderate, but robust, restructuring process. This was possible because, in addition to the differences there might be between the counties, there was also a shared subculture of professional managers.

The political strategy of consensus and fast clarification of the distribution of power made it possible both to choose a strategic design, which could work and satisfy the needs of many, and to make fast decisions about necessary conditions, such as staff policy strategies and decisions that might help reduce the sense of insecurity among the staff. In this context, it was especially important that the professional management body initially began with a radical openness about the entire decision-making process and about the restructuring process. These aspects together provide an explanation for the high degree of internal legitimacy of both the management and the staff with regard to the way the restructuring process is being dealt with. It is certainly a significant part of the reason why the Region Mid-Jutland project has come so far at this point in time.

Our point of departure for our studies of the restructuring process in Region Mid-Jutland was the supposition that the special conditions ensuing from the terms of the local government structural reform would turn out to have a decisive influence not only on the restructuring process but also on the outcome of the process in the form of a model for the organisation of the region and an understanding of the situation as a whole. This supposition also includes the notion that the political administrative structure and its rationale are the result of a strategic restructuring process governed by the strategic situation and by a process rationale given by society’s terms as well as by the specific way they chose, based on how key players entered the scene, to see and interpret this in Region Mid-Jutland. We also supposed that we would find path dependence, that there would be certain underlying structures, such as the histories and cultures of the county organisations, which would co-determine the development.  But as far as we can see, this has only been the case to a lesser extent than we presumed, in that the historical and cultural contrasts in interests and the differences between east and west within the region have turned out to be less significant than the common interests and characteristics of the political and administrative systems. The policy-makers have been able to agree on the new common project and the staff has, to a large extent, shared interdisciplinary cultures, making cooperation and the new integration easier. Particularly significant is the fact that a special management culture existed around professional and loyal top public officials. They were left with the responsibility of taking initiatives to make the necessary decisions and to implement the required processes. Thus, it is our contention that the immediate prehistory, the history that developed in the wake of the unfortunate starting point and the history that now rests on, among other things, political consensus, secure, results-oriented operations and professional management will result in a path dependence for the future development of Region Mid-Jutland.  But only with time and future studies will we know for sure.

The restructuring process, which was initiated immediately following the political agreement on local government structural reform in the Danish Parliament, resulted in November 2005 – when the election was held for the Amalgamation Committee – in a well-thought-out proposal for an organisational plan for Region Mid-Jutland to be presented to the Amalgamation Committee when it takes office. It is a clearly divisionalised organisation that has been developed one task area at a time within simple general guidelines. However, the organisation also appears, in several key areas, to be oriented towards policy-making. Strategic and analytical functions are ensured resources and gathered in the new head office. Several prioritisations are worth noting here. An effective communication is by and large considered crucial, and especially noteworthy is the possibility for policy-making in the area of regional growth and development of business and industry. The organisational plan, however, does not leave room for structural development in the area of service production. For instance, it does not contain changes to the hospital service structure nor to the structure for the regional social institutions.

When it comes to the political organisation, the preparations are not as far along. In this regard, the outcome of the November 2005 election is crucial for how to make dispositions within the tight framework defined by the legislation as regards committees, etc. under the Regional Council. The administrative management body did, however, prepare a catalogue of options immediately following the outcome of the election in order to underpin the political dispositions. Special emphasis was placed on providing options with regard to ensuring that the directly elected representatives, as well as those elected into the Regional Council’s chairpersonship and steering committee, have a meaningful opportunity to contribute to the process.

Consequently, what we see is the establishment of an organisation which, with regard to the key challenges, is impressively robust. The restructuring process has, to a great extent, taken place on professional terms that incorporate political premises. The reason for this is the special circumstances surrounding the process.

First, the restructuring process has taken place within the framework of ground rules, which have been set externally, primarily through the legislation on the local government structural reform. Especially critical for the professional orientation is the fact that more than a year passed from the period when the Danish Parliament announced the structural reform as inevitable to the period when it was possible, after the election of a political Preparation Committee, to establish a coherent political management body for the new region.

Second, it has been important to the restructuring process in Region Mid-Jutland that the key players, the county mayors and the top administrative decision-makers have been capable of establishing agreements on the future distribution of powers and management responsibilities, which at one point required clarification and internal accord. Given the pressures of time relating to getting the preparation process underway and given this clear distribution of powers, a path was paved for a restructuring process in which the professional management body in the initial and very critical stage was not only able to take on an independent and strong role, but was forced to take what was, in many aspects, a governing role. However, the administrative top management body has also been bound to implement those dispositions that could be motivated and legitimised as purely professional dispositions. This also means that the dynamics, which come with the political element, cannot be incorporated into the regional project until a later stage. Initially, this important aspect has only been considered a potential element.

Considerations of the political premises have, in fact, entailed decisions regarding three aspects:

• The region is, by nature, politically governed, and the positions for the 41 people elected to the Regional Council must, in any case, have meaningful content.
• The entire identity and role of the region will continue to be in play, but the organisation must, at one and the same time, underpin the political management body in the battle to realise a preferred role. Additionally, the organisation must be prepared to function with the role that will be the outcome of the actual clarification process.
• The basic organisational structures within the region have been formulated without any regular direct and express reference to a coherent overall management body with political responsibility. This has limited the possibilities for more extensive organisational renewal with a view to full exploitation of the potential inherent in the greater volume of the region, in comparison to the original counties. The organisation and the professional management body must, in turn, be prepared to implement this organisational renewal in the subsequent stages.

Link to

• Presentation

Publications