Bureaucracy and Geography

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World Political Science Review

Volume6, Issue1 2010 Article7

Bureaucracy and Geography: Geographic

Relocation of the Norwegian Central

Administration

Jarle Trondal Charlotte Kiland

University of Agder, Norway, [email protected] of Agder, Norway, [email protected]

Originally published as Charlotte Kiland and Jarle Trondal (2009) Byrakrati og geografi - ge-

ografisk relokalisering av norsk sentralforvaltning. Norsk statsvitenskapelig tidsskrift 25(4):331-

352. Reprinted with permission from Torbjorn L. Knutsen.

Produced by The Berkeley Electronic Press.


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Introduction

Public administration is a necessary prerequisite in order for political goals to betranslated into public action. The administration brings leadership, reviewcapacity, implementation and learning to political processes. It makes formal

decisions within a legal framework. It seems obvious that it is impossible for the

administration to play such a role without to some extent putting its stamp on

public policy. Public action will to a varying degree reflect features about theinner organization and outer network of the administration through the

personnel, the institutional history, and the geographic location of the

administration (Christensen and Egeberg 1997; Egeberg 2003; Egeberg andTrondal 2009; Lgreid and Olsen 1978; Olsen 1983). The dominant role of the

central administration in the political system makes it reasonable to assume that

the geographic relocation of the entire or parts of the administration impacts uponpublic policy. Administrative policy encompasses all kinds of politics directed

towards the infrastructure of administration that is, the deliberate change of

formal structures, procedures and personnel (Jacobsen and Roness 2008:145).

This article expands the definition of administrative politics so as to alsoencompass the deliberate altering of the physical structure and geographic

location of administration.

How does government ensure support for a change of the geographiclocation of central administrative functions? This is the question raised by this

article. We argue that such change can be explained to a great extent by the

formal organization of the decision-making process. This organizationalexplanation is not exhaustive, but seems crucial in explaining the 2003 relocation

of governmental supervisory agencies.The article provides a series of snapshots of the decision-making processes

surrounding the relocation of government agencies out of the Norwegian capital

of Oslo to cities in other parts of the country. In many ways, in carrying out thiswork, the Bondevik government had much going against it. With respect to

political steering, the past few decades of research have revealed increasing

constraints on the government as well as on individual government ministers

(Christensen and Lgreid 2002b; Engelstad and sterud 2004). Olsen (1983:104)has characterized the government as a clearance house with acute capacity

problems. Compared to the old foxes of the bureaucratic apparatus, the

government minister finds himself reduced to being a passenger in his ownministry. The conditions for the political steering of public policy in general, and

in singular cases in particular, are more complex and complicated than they used

to be. In addition to this, since the contents of the Bondevik reform proposal wasthe geographic relocation of central administration units, there were a number of

potential pitfalls. The physical relocation of institutions often leads to the

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Trondal and Kiland: Geographic Relocation of the Norwegian Central Administration

Published by Berkeley Electronic Press, 2010


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attention of and resistance from affected institutions. Earlier attempts at such

relocation have largely failed, and the Bondevik government could not rely for

support on any majority in the Norwegian Parliament, the Storting.

Studies reveal that major reform processes are characterized by limitedopportunities on the part of the political-administrative leadership to command

and control the process. An element of instrumental leadership seems to be moreimportant in more limited reorganizations compared to large-scale administrative

reform (Egeberg 1984). Still, this study shows that it was the formal organization

of the decision-making processes itself that led to the relocating of governmentagencies on a large scale. In short, the formal organization involved hierarchical

leadership from the government and selective inclusion (and exclusion) of the

affected parties.

Previous studies show that major reorganization decisions are more easilypushed through when affected parties are excluded from the actual review process

(Meyer and Stensaker 2009), whereas the likelihood of the relocation decisionactually being implemented later on increases when affected parties are includedin the process (Lien and Fremstad 1989). This study trains it main attention on the

review phase of the relocation process conducted by the government and the

municipalities; only to a lesser degree does it touch on the decision phase inParliament (Furumo 2006; Hommen 2003; Melbye 2007). The study finds that the

formal organization of the decision-making process most likely was essential with

respect to the treatment of the issue in Parliament and during the subsequentimplementation process.

The purpose of the article is to employ organizational theory to shed light

on one concrete decision-making process, namely that of the Postal and

Telecommunications Agency (PT) [Post- og Teletilsynet], as well as on thegeneral case of relocating government agencies. The case-selection of the PT was

made for pragmatic reasons our project group has been granted privilegedaccess to this body and has thus been exceptionally well qualified with respect to

looking into this particular decision-making process. The empirical data is drawn

from an extensive series of interviews with informants from the Bondevik IIgovernment, government ministries, the PT, local and regional governments, and

conducted between 2008 and 2009.

In the history of Norwegian public administration, no extensivegeographic relocation of governmental regulatory bodies has ever occurred.

Attempts were made in the 1970s and 1980s, but these efforts all more or less

failed (Stren 1983). A government White Paper on public agencies (St.meld. no.17, 2002-03: Om statlige tilsyn) reintroduced the idea that agencies should be

relocated and suggested a joint relocation of all such agencies from the nations

capital move them out of Oslo and establish them in several other cities

around the country. From the perspective of administrative history, the execution

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http://www.bepress.com/wpsr/vol6/iss1/art7

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of this idea the relocation of seven government agencies from Oslo is one of a

kind. Never before have so many agencies and civil servants been moved around

the country; the total number involved around 900 civil servants. One of the

reasons for the relocation was the goal of increased autonomy for the agenciesvis--vis government ministries and the political leadership (Hommen 2003:39;

Norman 2004:98). During that same period, there was also an increased debateabout reforming state agencies into more autonomous forms of organization and

more liberal regulatory frameworks (Lgreid et al. 2008:3).

This article is structured in the following way: The next section sketchesout an organizational theory perspective from which certain empirical predictions

are derived. Section three presents the empirical data of the study. Finally, we

provide an empirical overview of the decision-making process surrounding

government agencies in general, and the PT in particular. This section reveals twopartially overlapping decision sequences first, the central decision-making

process within government and government ministries, second the local decision-making processes in the affected municipalities.

An organizational theory perspective

The responsibility for reforming the civil service has traditionally been assigned

to the government; constitutionally it has been anchored in the government, and

headed by the Prime Minister as well as the government minister in charge ofadministrative affairs. Yet, the actual distribution of roles between the political

leadership, government ministries and regulatory bodies may often be less clear

than what the constitution suggests. One of the central assumptions of this section

is that both decision-making behavior and the understanding of roles have beensystematically shaped by the formal organization of concrete decision-making

procedures.An organizational theory perspective assumes bounded rationality in the

political-administrative leadership. It also assumes that decision-making processes

with respect to the relocation of central administrative entities will be conditionedby the constraints implied by such leadership. Bounded rationality implies the

existence of cognitive constraints with respect to the gathering of information, the

working of information, as well as of its use (Simon 1957). Roles such as civilservant or government minister often become complex when faced with

unfamiliar and contradictory decision-making contexts. One reason why formal

organizational structures shape the decision-making behavior of the actors is thatorganizational structures systematically sort and filter (ir)relevant decision-

making information. The formal organization of political-administrative

institutions simplifies the search for relevant information and filters the

conceptions of what is perceived as relevant problems, solutions and

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consequences (Egeberg 2003; Thelen and Steinmo 1992). Through this buffer

function, local rationality is systematically aggregated into a collective

organizational rationality. Consequently, the organizational distribution of

relevant decision-making information impacts on the ways in which the actorsthink and act, and thus represent the premise upon which decision-making in

reform processes rests.An organizational perspective emphasizes the sectoral fragmentation and

horizontal breakdown of executive power. The notion of a vertically ordered

hierarchy of actors and a unitary and stable preference structure amongst thegovernment and civil service is being challenged. According to Gulick (1937),

examples of organization beyond the territorial are expressed within

administrative institutions. Within the Norwegian civil service we primarily find

horizontal specialization based on purpose and function, both within the specificgovernment ministries and in the relevant directorates and agencies. At regional

and local levels institutions are organized according to their objective as well asthe kind of process organization found for instance with respect to operationcontrols (Christensen et al. 2002:149). Thus, civil servants have sectoral mandates

shaped by the management of their own government ministries or agencies.

Decision-making processes will to a lesser extent be coordinated through aunified hierarchy and command structure, and to a greater extent within each

singular administrative field, based on the basic roles, routines and rules of

government ministries and agencies. The civil servants represent formalizedsector-specific portfolios, characterized by a tradition of written statements and

formalized work procedures (Weber 1964). The horizontal specialization of

government ministries and agencies will counteract horizontally integrated reform

processes. Government ministers and civil servants may easily come to perceiveof themselves as sectoral representatives and only secondarily as representatives

of the entire government and/or civil service.This is a perspective that also assumes that the formal organization of

singular processes systematically shapes the thoughts and actions of the actors.

Thus, the relocating of administrative bodies can be controlled by the political-administrative management through the organizational design of concrete

decision-making processes. If the government seeks to maximize its control over

the reform process, a clear distinction can be made between politics andadministration, whereby the reform of the central administration primarily

becomes a concern of the political leadership (Friedman 2008:484). Reforming

the central administration, including decisions concerning the relocation ofsingular institutions, can be initiated and governed by the political-administrative

leadership.

From an organizational theory perspective the relocation of the

administration can be perceived as a consequence of deliberate action taken on the

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part of the political-administrative leadership, which is where we will find the

overview and the power with respect to relevant goals and means. Extensive

reform, as for instance the geographic relocation of a series of central

administrative agencies, can be carried out by leaders with extensive knowledge,power and political-administrative resources with respect to reform (March and

Olsen 1989). The issue of power is tied in with whether or not the political-administrative leadership has command over those reform measures required in

order to achieve the desired goals. The issue of knowledgehas to do with whether

or not the management has the necessary understanding of the connectionsbetween reform measures and desired goals (Christensen and Lgreid 2002a:18-

19).

Relocation processes, both in terms of their scope and geography, are

controlled by a hierarchy of actors. Within the central administration of the state,the government undertakes the horizontal coordination of the reform programs of

the different government ministries within each separate policy area. With respectto major reform projects, the Office of the Prime Minister (Statsministerenskontor or SMK) may easily have its own peculiar interdepartmental and

coordinating function. There is reason to believe that the Prime Minister takes

more of an active part in large-scale administrative reform, in particular whenthese processes attract political attention and party-political opposition. Sectoral

government ministries with particular administrative responsibilities like the

then Ministry of Labor and Administration are also expected to play a centralpart in such relocation processes. Relocating central administrative bodies may

also involve the regional and local political-administrative management,

particularly in areas that are directly affected by the relocation of agencies.

Administrative reform affecting local and regional actors might also lead to thelocal and regional mobilization of local and regional political-administrative

leadership.An organizational theory perspective may also encompass actors from

outside the political-administrative leadership. The hierarchy of actors can be

deliberately dismantled through organizational design. In the neo-corporateliterature, the agenda of the authorities is penetrated by external non-

governmental organizations through the erection of councils and committees

(Mazey and Richardson 2001). Establishing committees with externalrepresentation is an enduring tradition within the Norwegian central

administration. In this way, actors, problems and solutions are imported into the

reform process. One might imagine that local and regional authorities participatein the reform process of the central administration through invitation. In the same

way, bureaucrats on the ground can be included in the reform process. However,

the political-administrative leadership has to its disposal policy instruments like

the right of initiative, the right to recall and the right to dissolve (Olsen

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The central decision-making processes; stages and characteristics

Previous studies reveal that larger reform processes are often marked by limited

political-administrative steering. More limited reorganization processes seem toinvolve a higher degree of instrumental leadership than larger administrative

reforms (Egeberg 1984). Even if attempts in the 1970s and -80s at small-scalerelocation of government agencies failed (Stren 1983), this section shows that

large-scale relocations of government agencies was ensured through a formal

organization in support of hierarchical leadership, aided by local mobilization andnetworks.

What immediately distinguishes previous attempts at relocating

government agencies from the 2003 cases was the formal organization of the

different processes. The government has earlier and over a long time-spanpresented Parliament with a number of singular and isolated relocation cases.

These proposals have largely been reviewed by the affected agencies. As aconsequence of the review process becoming temporally drawn out, there hasbeen a considerable turnover in terms of decision-makers. A full nine

governments and 16 government ministers have been involved (Stren 1983). A

direct consequence of this was weak political leadership of the decision-makingprocesses. Stre (1983) shows how each and every isolated relocation case of the

1970s and -80s was pulverized as a consequence of Parliament providing support

for theprincipleof relocation only. This support vanished once a relocation issuebecame a concrete one. In 2003, the government presented Parliament with a

general and extensive agency package. In a controlled and closed political

process, Parliament was presented with a general and extensive relocation plan

a package deal.

The reform program

On 24 January 2002, the Minister for Labor and Administrative Affairs, Victor D.

Norman, presented Parliament with an account of the governments reformprogram, From word to action. The modernization, rationalization and

simplification of the public sector. This reform program contained a proposal for

the relocation of government agencies. Minister Norman also informedParliament that the government is also working on a review of government

agencies, and that this will be presented to Parliament as a separate proposal at a

later date. The Ministers intention was to introduce a series of measures designedto strengthening and simplifying the control- and supervisory function, increasing

the autonomy of the supervisory agencies, strengthening their specialist

competency, and selecting a beneficial geographical location for each of the

agencies. It was also argued that a geographic relocation would strengthen

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agencies autonomy by reducing the informal contacts between governments

ministries and the agencies. Finally, the government had included a de-

centralizing principle as a plank in its political platform.1Thus, Victor Normans

proposal was solidly tied to this platform. Nevertheless, as this study shows,Norman took both the government and his own political party by surprise by

publicly announcing his relocation proposal before it had been cleared within thegovernment.

The government published its relocation White Paper in its entirety on 24

January 2003. The main contents, however, had been public knowledge ever sincethe plan was announced at a press conference a year previously. The

Parliamentary resolution on the relocation of 7 agencies was made on 6 June

2003. When Minister Victor Norman was reviewing the relocation proposal he

appointed a committee of state secretaries. The committee was headed by theMinisters personal secretary, who reported directly to Norman. Thus, early on the

process was organized around the government minister. From April untilSeptember 2002, this committee met four times, discussing the overriding purposeof the reform. During this phase, explicitly in order to prevent political attention,

noise and resistance, Norman deliberately decided that the relocation issue should

not become subject to a full government debate involving all governmentmembers. He chose a path of speedy preparation and treatment of the relocation

issue, which also implied excluding the representatives of the civil service, the

unions and the agencies (interview). The Minister was very much aware of howthe failed relocation efforts of the 1970s and -80s had floundered on the lack of

political leadership (Meyer and Stensaker 2009:9).

The review process

The decision-making process entered its second phase in September 2002, asMinister Norman received the go-ahead from the government to start working on

an agency white paper. Norman cherry-picked his own people to serve on a

secretariat during the molding of the white paper (Hommen 2003:23). This phaseof the decision-making process involved a limited number of state secretaries as

well as two civil servants from the Labor and Administration Ministry (AAD).

The actual writing of the white paper (no 17 (2002-03)) chapter on the relocationof government agencies was the work of these two civil servants only, as well as

the AAD state secretary (interview). The reason behind the rigid organization of

the process was to get the review phase over with in a hurry. It was alsoconfirmed that the scope of the review was substantively limited and that in

1 This principle was included in the declaration (the so-called Semb declaration), which precededthe formation of the Bondevik II (coalition) government.

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general this way of crafting a white paper is highly unusual. It was done in a

closed manner in particular with respect to the shaping of the proposal about the

relocation of government agencies. Framing this chapter took about two weeks

(interview).

The reasoning was not all that meticulous, but that is kind of fair enough. Ithink it would have been far worse if the white paper gave the impression

that this had been thoroughly reviewed But it is obviously a problem

that we were not able to map the strengths and weaknesses of such apolitical review process in the manner that the regulations stipulate. The

civil service did not start working on this until two weeks before the press

conference. Considering that we normally spend two years on such

processes (interview).

Still, Norman and the project group faced challenges with respect to the cost ofrelocation. A couple of AAD civil servants conducted a cost analysis, which wasmassively criticized, both by the Ministry of Finance and by the labor

organizations (Hommen 2003:22). In December 2002, only weeks after Norman

had made the relocation plans public, he received a letter from Finance SecretaryLorentsen, where the AAD was reminded about the regulatory framework

governing public reviews. In the letter he sharply criticized the proposal, with

particular reference to the fact that the economic estimates did not stand up toscrutiny. Referring to the regulatory framework, the Finance Secretary called

attention to the lack of a proper review (AftenpostenMarch 14, 2003). Lorentsen

also submitted that the white paper arrived too early and that it was too badly

prepared. Further, the criticism urged that it only to a limited extent drew onreviews and reports (Melbye 2007:49). When the Agency White Paper was later

discussed in Parliament, Trond Giske of the Labor Party described it as extremelysketchy (Hommen 2003:29). This criticism supports the impression that the

review of the proposal to relocate government agencies was deliberately

characterized by a low degree of decision-making rationalityand a high degree ofaction rationality. There were few opposing views on the part the other affected

government ministers against Normans proposal, and the Agency White Paper

was presented to Parliament by a united government (Furumo 2006:46).Thus, the review phase of the relocation proposal was characterized by a

limited number of actors that were controlled top-down by the AAD minister,

secrecy towards affected parties, tight deadlines, and only limited review ofalternatives and consequences. Other affected ministers and their permanent

secretaries had little knowledge of the concrete relocation alternatives before mid-

November 2002, when the government made its decision. The proposal of actual

places for relocation was aired with affected government ministers within the

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Conservative Party and the Christian Peoples Party. These government ministers

had no objections to the proposed places for relocation, and the proposals were

formally passed by a plenary government.

Minister Normans strategy was to distinguish political and administrativearenas of decision-making during the review phase. The reasoning was that while

it would be good to get the review process over with as soon as possible, theimplementation process was supposed to last several years (Meyer and Stensaker

2009). Another consequence of the short review period was that the government

did not go through with a regular hearing of the proposal (Melbye 2007:41). Theagency management was constantly reassured by the leadership of the Ministry of

Transport and Communications that relocation on their part was highly unlikely.

This gives us reason to believe that the Ministry of Transport and

Communications only had a very limited role to play in the relocation decision.

We constantly kept talking to the Ministry of Transport andCommunications that in case of relocation, we most likely would bemoved to Bergen alongside the Norwegian Competition Authority. But we

didnt know anything. There were no signals to be interpreted. Norman

had to prevent the civil service from going crazy, and if he had beentalking too much, he would have run the risk of stalling the entire process

(interview).

Throughout the review process, Victor Norman and his secretariat planned

which groups of actors should be included early on and which groups of actors

should be kept out of the loop until the final phase of the decision-making

process. The government also anticipated the reactions of the Parliament, thuspresenting an agency package that strategically distributed agencies across

different geographic regions so as to secure a majority for the proposal in thenational assembly. The debate that ensued in Parliament served to confirm the

governments reasoning: The parliamentary conflict lines criss-crossed regular

party lines with a geographical pattern emerging in the sense that therepresentatives from Oslo ended up standing against the representatives from the

other regions (Melbye 2007). Before the government presented the Agency White

Paper, the PT higher management learnt from the Ministry of Transport andCommunication that the PT would not be relocated.

Moving the Norwegian Competition Authority to Bergen can be perceivedas a rational decision, considering the expertise of the Norwegian School

of Economics and Business Administration in Bergen, but moving the

Postal and Telecommunications Agency to Lillesand, whats the rationale

behind that? (interview)

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Informants within the Ministry of Transport and Communications confirm theassumption that if the PT were to be moved, it would have been moved with the

Norwegian Competition Authority to Bergen. When it was made clear that the PT

instead would be moved to the Agder city [Agder being the southernmostregion in Norway] (White Paper no 17 (2002-03):77), several informants within

the PT expressed confusion as to the lack of an exactly specified location. At this

time, most of the people within the agency were unfamiliar with the historic linesof conflict between east and west Agder and with the rivalries between cities of

the two parts. Until the localization decision was made, the mayor of Kristiansand

was the only local actor who directly contacted the director of the agency, and

who early on expressed any interest in bringing the agency to Kristiansand(interview). In a letter to the Ministry of Transport and Communications, dated

December 13, 2002, the director of the PT argues strongly that Kristiansand

should become the eventual location.

With hindsight, we realized that a political compromise was important,

and thus ended up locating the agency in Lillesand. Taking the conflictand rivalry between the eastern and western cities in the region into

account, locating the agency in Kristiansand would have resulted in too

much noise. Lillesand stood out as the compromise solution and the result

of a lack of good arguments (interview).

By keeping the affected agencies out of the review phase, several agencies were

caught by surprise when the proposal was made public. Several informants withinthe PT expressed bewilderment as to why the agency would be located in such a

tiny southern town.

It could of course be that the PT would be moved to Agder in order to

compensate for the job losses that occurred when Ericsson moved out ofGrimstad [Lillesands neighboring town]. But this line of reasoning has no

relevance with respect to expertise. We are no longer a technical agency,

and we havent been since 1985. Victor Norman probably did notunderstand this. Several of the local actors also missed out in this respect.

The mayor of Grimstad argued very strongly that preserving the citys

technical expertise was important, and was evidently not aware of whatkind of expertise the agency actually has (interview).

The Agency White Paper line of reasoning was not well received by the affected

groups (interview). Several of the PT informants emphasized the access to

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relevant expertise and their relations with the objects sorting under the agency as

reasons why the agency ought not to be moved.

I never understood why Norman didnt use the argument that this wouldcreate jobs in the regional districts. In that case, the agency relocation

would have made sense. But what he suggested was that the expertiseneeded replacing, as if the expertise out there was better than what we had

inside the agency (interview).

The argument about increasing the autonomy of the government agencies by

increasing the geographical distance to the center also fueled strong reactions

within the PT, as they pointed out exactly the actual autonomy that they already

had vis--vis the ministry, independently of their geographic location.

The argument about increasing our autonomy really just highlights thelack of a rationale behind the argument. We have never been controlled bythe ministry to any great extent. This is a phony line of reasoning. We

have always had a major degree of authority delegated to us. 10-15 years

ago independence was a big talking point, but not today. Also, we aresubordinate to the ministry, and they influence us anyway if they want to,

independently of our geographic location. We have never been controlled

by the ministry to any great extent (interview).

Despite the agency relocation decision formally being grounded in the Ministry of

Transport and Communications, none of the PT informants thought that the

political leadership of the Ministry of Transport and Communications had playedany central role. On the contrary, some of the informants emphasized the lack of

political leadership on the part of the Ministry.

I do not think that Skogsholm [the government Minister at the time] was

involved in the process until the very end, when the decision was to bemade. She never participated. She was the one formally in charge of

making the decision, but no one has any doubt that this was primarily the

handiwork of Victor [the current AAD minister] and the government(interview).

It was a major shock when it became clear that the PT would be moved out ofOslo. Representatives of the upper management of the agency as well as other PT

employees describe how the administrative management of the Ministry of

Transport and Communications handled the reactions within the agency. At an

information meeting in the PT shortly after the relocation decision had been

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announced, the administrative management of the Ministry of Transport and

Communications presented the necessary information about the decision.

Following the decision, at the ministry they constantly kept emphasizing:keep in mind that this is just politics It seemed like it had taken them

as much by surprise as it had us (interview).

At a relatively late stage of the review and decision-making phase, when it was

already well-known that the PT would be relocated, the agencys employees, firstand foremost represented by the unions, got involved. They involved themselves

actively, fighting against the governments relocation plan, and actively lobbied

the Parliament. With the agency director as well as others within the PT

management, they made their view of the Agency White Paper well-known, bothin the media and at several conferences. The same type of resistance from the

employees was to be found in each and every affected agency (Knutsen 2009).

Our director is clever, he never let the media in any doubt as to his

opinion, and this felt really good to the rest of us in the agency, but then

again, in the aftermath of the relocation decision, he has been extremelyloyal towards it (interview).

Also right after the decision to relocate the PT, reactions were strong andfrustration was major (interview). The agency upper management had to balance

their resistance against the reasoning of the political decision and their loyalty

towards the government. One of its members explained how:

When the decision was made, I was in Hong Kong. I was sitting in the

hotel and decided to call a journalist in the [business] newspaper DagensNringsliv. In this way, I managed to get good publicity in the newspaper,

where the headline Rubbish referred to my characterization of the

reasoning behind the Ministrys decision not the decision itself, but thereasoning behind it. Which is probably why my outburst was deemed

acceptable. I have colleagues who to this day cannot understand how I

managed to keep my job But I think the civil service liked it, I havereceived some indications that go in that direction, even if they told me

that I could not pull a stunt like this again. I received a lot of goodwill you

seefrom it. They appreciated that I demonstrated my frustration with thereasoning at the same time as they realized that I had to be loyal towards

the decision itself. All the employees understood this. Officially, at some

stage I had to fall in line and be loyal towards the political management,

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All our informants point out that the relocation of government agencies in

general, and the PT in particular, to a large extent was a top-down process on the

part of AAD Minister Victor Norman. Several of them characterize the agency

reform as his personal project. Through his academic background as professor ofeconomics, Norman had in his research work, his involvement in review cases,

and as a highly profiled participant in the public debate, expressed clearpreferences with respect to economic regulation theories, institutional autonomy

and the distribution of institutional roles (interview). For several years before he

became government Minister, he had been outspoken about the need for moreautonomous agencies (Hommen 2003; Meyer and Stensaker 2009). His research

on clusters and regulatory capture was well-known by many of the informants

both in the PT, the government ministries and in the government itself. In the PT,

several informants even expressed sympathy and agreement with his reasoning(interview). When White Paper no 17 (2002-03) arrived, several agency members

were convinced that the affected agencies would be collectively relocated toBergen or Trondheim a kind of functional co-localization in line with Normansreasoning that expertise should be spread so as to create genuine administrative

centers of gravity beyond Oslo a kind of Norwegian polycentrism. However, in

the Agency White Paper none of the professional reasons for the relocation wasemphasized. Instead, the White Paper employed arguments along the lines of

access to highly qualified labor, access to clusters of expertise, the strengthening

of regional centers, the altering of work methods and competency, contact costs,cost cuts, and concerns for the employees (White Paper no 17 (2002-03):70-73).

When the government presented the Agency White Paper, Victor Norman

emphasized that the reason for this was not that the Norwegian agencies were

doing a bad job, but that the reform would be introduced as a precautionarymeasure. Low decision-making rationality, a superficial impact assessment and

the exclusion of affected agencies from the review process, contributed to asituation where the agencies employees found it hard to accept the reasoning

behind the proposal (interview). Norman and the government had found a

solution, but without having a problem that actually needed solving. Whichproblem the relocation was supposed to address, was not at all obvious. The way

in which the process was formally organized still ensured that the relocation

proposal was accepted by Parliament.

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Summary

From an empirical perspective, it becomes clear how the temporal organizationof

the process became crucial to the decision-making process and how orchestrating,sequencing and pace were important with respect to getting Normans proposal

through in the government and Parliament. Norman exploited a politicalopportunity once he was admitted as a government Minister: His solution was to

initiate a decision-making process that had to be fast and rigidly controlled from

the top, where the range of involved actors had to be constrained and wherepotential opponents excluded from the process for as long as possible. The

minister also seemed very conscious about initiating a process consisting of as

few sequences as possible, so as to ensure a speedy review and to prevent

mobilization of potential resistance towards the reform.From an organizational theory perspective, the horizontal specialization of

government ministries and agencies would be expected to counteract horizontallyintegrated reform processes. Civil servants and government ministers perceive ofthemselves first and foremost as sectoral representatives, and only secondarily as

representatives of the government and/or the civil service as a whole. The general

impression is that Norman and his secretariat did not coordinate horizontally withthe affected sectoral ministries or with the government as a whole. This means

that the government Minister largely designed the process and that it was shielded

from public discussion as well as from potential opposition within the civilservice itself and from other government ministries. The process that led to the

decision phase was hierarchic, rigidly controlled and marked by a large degree of

decision-making rationality.

Victor Norman seems to have lost out in one particular respect: Theoriginal plan, which was to erect regional clusters of public agencies outside of

Oslo, fell through as the government looked into the issue.

I dont know if it was Normans lack of experience as a politician that

prevented him from understanding how this cluster-idea of his would meetresistance in the Parliament. In order to minimize this resistance, he was in

many ways forced to go for a solution whereby agencies would be spread

around the country; doling something out to everybody, so as to minimizeresistance. In this way, the professional rationale behind the reform

disappeared, reducing it to mere politics (interview).

The political negotiations and compromise during the final phase of the

government review process thus led to a more fragmented outcome than was the

original aim of the government Minister.

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Local decision-making process: From the Parliament to the Senate

What we describe as local decision-making processes with respect to the

relocation of government agencies in general and the PT in particular involvesone particular group of actors: the affected municipalities. Even if the

municipalities did not play any central part in the decision-making process, theywere still mobilized for the purpose of affecting the decisions made by

government and the Parliament. The State Secretary of the AAD and head of the

project group confirms that this was a strategic move made by central actors,partly to mobilize local groups to support relocation and partly to remove groups

that were expected to oppose the reform (interview). The affected municipalities

spent considerable resources on lobbying. They focused their attention on the

government and on singular MPs, especially during the phase following thegovernment announcement of the relocation resolution. The Parliament standing

committee that was formally in charge of examining the government proposalexperienced heavy pressure from several special interest groups (Furumo2006:67). The government proposal mobilized expectations and lobbying on the

part of the municipalities that felt affected by the governments proposal (Meyer

and Stensaker 2009).With respect to the relocation of the PT, the local actors in the Agder

region describe the decision-making process as rigidly controlled by the

government Minister, and that this was primarily the doings of Victor Norman(interview). But with respect to the actual relocation of the agencies the

municipalities perceived a more open process if not an open-ended one. The

extent of local actors and resources that were mobilized by the different

municipalities was considerable. All the involved municipalities sent delegationsto the government as well as to the Ministry for Transport and Communication

which was formally in charge of making the final decision on the relocation issue(interview). Thus, the affected municipalities were formally invited to

participating in the review work.

The local processes surrounding the relocation of the PT were deeplyaffected by municipal involvement induced by the local political leadership. This

illustrates how the agency relocation created political involvement in the regional

districts, as well as how the districts were pushing for supervision, jobs andexpertise to be relocated to the regions. Thus, the number of actors involved in the

process was high, changing, and unstable, weakening the hierarchical control as

the process went on.

The decision itself was strongly controlled by the government Minister

himself. With respect to relocation, Norman kept the cards close to his

chest. We were never told why instead of choosing a specific city he

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introduced the notion of the Agder city. Granted, Lillesand was a

candidate, but the choice of Lillesand still came as a major surprise to us,

as we never really thought that it was a very relevant one. I think that this

was a political compromise so as to create more support for the Agdercity, and thus bring both Grimstad and Kristiansand back in the fold

(interview).

Early on, before the government had decided on the geographic location of the

agencies, it was also speculated that The Norwegian Maritime Agency(Sjfartstilsynet) would be placed somewhere in Agder. The municipality of

Arendal was part of the early phase of this discussion. But the present mayor

learnt early on from the AAD that the Maritime Agency would not be relocated to

any of the southern municipalities. The Arendal delegation thus chose towithdraw from the relocation struggle and instead put their support behind the

neighboring town of Grimstad (interview). It was only when VN announced thatthe PT would be moved to the Agder City that the Agder municipalities startedmobilizing in earnest. In the Agency White Paper, the PT was the only agency

that had not been placed in a specific geographic location. This most likely

contributed to making the struggle between the municipalities about this particularagency fiercer (interview). Also the political management of the Ministry of

Transport and Communications at the time confirms that the relocation battle in

Agder was unique:

When the Agder City notion was introduced as one of the potential

locations for the PT, I was concerned. I imagined how, locally, this would

create a very peculiar form of game between the municipalities. And therewas certainly far more noise from the Agder region stemming both from

this particular struggle, which played itself out locally, and from an ingeneral greater degree of involvement throughout this region than was

the case for the others. With the other agencies the places of relocation

tended to be more obvious they were givens, unlike what was the case inthe Agder region (interview).

Later in the process, the municipality of Lillesand also threw itself into the battleover the PT. Archival material of the media coverage of this issue reveals that

Lillesand received very moderate public attention. This was an expression of a

deliberate strategy on the part of the municipality to avoid media attention. But itwas most likely also an indication that the involvement of the municipality was

not taken very seriously by the media.

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This ended up as a classic relocation battle. Tempers flared, but

discussions were mostly civilized. Grimstad and Kristiansand

acknowledged each other as competitors. But Lillesand was never taken

very seriously, and so we could lurk in the shadows (interview).

The decision made by the Ministry of Transport and Communications to move thePT to Lillesand took most of the involved local actors by surprise. With respect to

Lillesand, location was the main argument employed towards the political

management of the ministry. The political management of the Ministry ofTransport and Communications to some extent confirms the importance of local

lobbying with respect to the final PT localization decision. As there were no AAD

guidelines as to the exact Agder region location, this turned into an open process,

giving the municipalities' ample opportunity to influence the final decision(interview):

For the PT, there were no obvious expert clusters in the Agder region towhich the agency could be sensibly linked. Thus, there were mainly two

arguments that drove the location decision; well-being and happiness for

the employees and, maybe most importantly, real estate opportunities.Lillesand wasted no time in providing us potential locations and building

sites (interview).

In addition to this, Lillesands municipal delegation had in its midst one of the

lobbyists who had coined the concept the Agder City. This lobbyist dexterously

sold the logic behind this concept to the political management of the Ministry of

Transport and Communications (interview).

I imagine Victor Norman had fun watching the southerners relate to thisfunctional notion, which they had so far kept at arms length. When doing

planning work, one deals in administrative quantities. When Norman

threw the Agder City into the fray, he wreaked havoc, as they now hadto deal with a functional quantity to which no institution belonged. And he

forced them onto an arena where they were uncomfortable (interview).

Also in the early 1990s, Victor Norman had served as a provider of

premises and assessments to the Agder municipalities. Then chief municipal

executive of Kristiansand drew on Norman for reflections and review work(interview). Norman had, as early as 1994, worked on a development project, the

so-called Common Agder Goals, together with the lobbyist who was behind

the Agder City concept. The development project had sought to hammer out a

platform for a stronger regional perspective on Agder, with the appropriation of

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government jobs to the region as a central aim (interview). Thus, Normans

regional background served as the backdrop against which the Agder City

notion in the Agency White Paper should be understood.

The decision-making process surrounding the relocation issue was alsocharacterized by a network of local and central actors with a common perception

of the challenges faced by the Agder region (Sahlin-Andersson 2002; VanWarden 1992). Suggestively, this network has colloquially been branded the

Senate. Norman had particularly intimate knowledge of the Agder region, and it

is hardly a coincidence that the notion the Agder City made its way into theAgency White Paper.

During their lobbying effort, the affected municipalities directed their

attention towards party factions and regional representatives in Parliament.

Several regions and municipalities began their lobbying early much earlier thanthe Agder municipalities did. This had to do with the fact that for all the agencies,

except the PT, an exact geographic location had already been chosen (WhitePaper no 17 (2002-03)).

A core aspect to the local Agder processes was that the mobilizing of the

municipal and regional lobbying towards government, Ministry and Parliament

came as a consequence of the way in which the process was organized around thegovernment minister and secretary committee of the AAD. The affected

municipalities were invited into both the review and the decision phase, as they

were perceived of as potential supporters of the government proposal. The AADpolitical leadership was convinced that this would create local expectations,

which would then increase in strength as the process matured, and thus serve as

extra external pressure on the government and Parliament. Thus, even the local

process appears as part of a larger organizational strategy, controlled politicallyby the AAD political leadership.

Conclusions

This study illustrates how the political leadership of governments balanceddecision-making rationality and action rationality through the deliberate

organization of a decision-making process. The dilemma between the concern for

decision-making rationality and action rationality is accentuated with respect topolitical decision-making processes where there is major potential for conflict and

power struggle and particularly in a situation where the Parliamentary situation

contributes to further uncertainty about the decisional outcome.For the government, the relocation issue was primarily one of organizing

the decision-making processes so that it maximized the likelihood of success in

Parliament. For this, they chose a rigidly organized process, characterized by the

selective inclusion and exclusion of actors, and a rigid sequencing of the decision-

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making process. Experiences derived from failed 1970s and -80s attempts at

agency relocation contributed to a rigid organizing of the decision-making process

in the government, and within the AAD in particular. Potential

opponents/adversaries were systematically excluded from the process. For thepolitical leadership, uncertainty was reduced as a consequence of the scarcity of

competing actors and arguments. Opposing voices and contradictory expectationswere systematically excluded from the decision-making process for as long as

possible.

What also emerges is an image of overlapping decision-making processes,centrally and locally. During the review phase, affected municipalities were

formally invited into the process by the government. However, this participation

seems to have had limited impact. Even after the decision to relocate the

government agencies had been made by the government, local mobilizationoccurred. During the final phase of this political decision-making process, the

element of hierarchical control was supplemented by local lobbying andnetworks. Exactly because the decision about the exact location of the PTsomewhere in the Agder region was left open, as opposed to relocation decisions

concerning each and every one of the other agencies, local lobbying and

networking arose/became prominent. A result of this was that the pattern of actorsbecame more complex and more changeable, and that the element of negotiation

and compromise became more prominent. The local processes were characterized

by classic geographic localization struggles between the affected municipalities,where the conflict lines often mirrored historical regional conflict lines.

The study illustrates the effect of the formal organization of political

decision-making processes. Several studies have shown that the leverage of the

government in general is pretty limited, compared to that of the centraladministration and international organizations in particular the EU Commission

(Trondal 2009). With respect to administrative politics the governments leverageis often constrained by international fads (Jacobsen and Roness 2008). The case

of geographic relocation of agencies case reveals that political control can be

ensured during concrete decision-making processes through the formal design ofsuch processes. This example can be perceived of as a critical case because

earlier attempts at relocating government agencies for all practical purposes

stranded, and because the relocation of institutions often mobilizes tremendousattention and resistance from affected parties. This organizational explanation is

by no means exhaustive, but it seems crucial with respect to explaining the

outcome of the 2003 government agency relocation issue.

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