The Danish Municipal CEO: Managing the Local Welfare State

This chapter revisits research from the 1980s and 1990s and analyses the collective profile of the Danish municipal CEO (MCEOs) and its evolution since the 1980s. The analysis shows the embeddedness of the MCEO position in (a) the formal structure of local liberal democracy, (b) the long-term historical trends of public sector expansion, which in the Danish (Nordic) context primarily took place at the local government level, and (c) its associated large, expanding multi-task municipal organizations influenced by (d) national policy priorities and (e) globally diffusing models of governance, such as the new public management (NPM) reform wave of the 1980s. The analysis provides a unique portrait of the changing profile of the MCEOs managing these organizations, which currently employ around 18% of the Danish workforce and 56% of public employees, spend more than 60% of public consumption, and deliver most of the core services of the Danish welfare state. Building on primary and secondary data and previous as well as the most recent research, the chapter provides crucial new knowledge of management and leadership in Danish local government.