Efficiency and democracy: Local governance dilemmas on the Finnish periphery

Abstract

The municipality and administration of Lieksa, a small town in a peripheral location in the north-eastern part of the Finnish Lake District, has undergone significant transformation since 2015 to provide the city with more effective tools to achieve its own local development goals, especially strengthening the local business environment. A key element of the transformation is Lieksa's development strategy for the period up to 2030, adopted in 2015, which emphasizes not only the objective of economic viability (local “vitality”) but also the strengthening of community and citizen participation in local decision-making. The study reports on these changes and their circumstances, based on the results of a wider research carried out under the RELOCAL project (funded under the Horizon 2020 programme of the EU), while seeking to assess the extent to which distributional “injustices” caused by territorial disadvantages can be mitigated by the renewal of municipal processes. The study is based on mainly interviews and focus group discussions performed during 2018-2019; and seeks to draw more general conclusions about ‘shrinking’ peripheral towns and regions from the considerations regarding the future of Lieksa. The case study highlights the need for a degree of autonomy at the local level that allows making independent decisions that take into account the specifics and interests of the place. The municipality, including its leaders, the various stakeholder groups and local residents, must be involved in joint and reflective learning processes in order to find the optimal responses to complex socio-economic issues such as ‘shrinking’ and balancing between effective administration and democratic accountability. Nevertheless, although crises and pressure are often drivers of innovation, without external redistributive support, local interventions may produce only short-lived and vulnerable outcomes.

Keywords: territorial disadvantage; spatial justice; shrinking; effective administration and democratic accountability