New Public Management Reforms and Democratic Legitimacy: Notions of Democratic Legitimacy among West European Local Councillors

Abstract

The article extends the question about the notion of democracy to the concept of democratic legitimacy and distinguishes between input and output-based legitimacy. We explore local councillors' view on the two alternative notions of legitimacy. The first question is descriptive and concerns the support for alternative notions of democratic legitimacy among councillors across twelve West European countries. What notion of legitimacy receives the stronger support: input-based legitimacy, associated with representative democracy and participation, or output-based legitimacy, emphasising the performance of democratic institutions – as promoted by New Public Management reforms? The second question is explanatory and concerns whether the view held by the councillors depends on the multi-level government system in a specific country. We assume that the more responsibility for the production of welfare services held by local government, the more support output-oriented legitimacy measures is likely to receive. We find that our measures of input-based legitimacy receive more widespread support than the measures of output-based legitimacy. As regards the impact of local government systems and responsibilities held by local governments our main hypothesis does gain some support, but the results are not significant. A reasonable interpretation of the fairly weak findings at this point is that local government in all European countries has a strong political foundation. Despite system differences and NPM reforms, European councillors appear to be strongly attached to their traditional representative role.