New Modes of Local Political Organizing Local Government Fragmentation in Scandinavia

The book should be of interest to students and researchers in local government and institutional analysis, mainly within political science, public administration, urban affairs and sociology. The empirical focus in this book is on Scandinavia, but the theoretical implications go far beyond those particular countries. The development towards fragmentation of local governmental bodies seems to be universal, at least in the Western countries. This calls for reconsideration of our conceptual luggage which has mainly been linked to formal organizations; the development seems to challenge such an understanding in favor of broader concepts like governance, to replace government as a basic unit of analysis. Formal government is not obsolete, but does not suffice any longer.