Interviews with Municipal Top Civil Servants, 1982

The survey forms part of the project 'Statslig styring, lokalsamfund og kommunalpolitik' (State Control, Local Communities and Local Politics), which is an interdisciplinary project dealing with Danish local government and approaching this subject from various angles. An attempt is made at mapping out and systematizing the development of state control, at uncovering the most important determinants in municipal priority ordering and at assessing the relative 'power' of these determinants. Furthermore, the choice of the municipalities as regards budgeting method is examined and is compared with municipal priority ordering; the influence of the framework agreements concerning reductions in the growth of municipal expenditure on the actual use of resources is analysed; and the influence of various organizations, of trade and of the political parties on local politics is examined and analysed. #This survey consists of interviews with the following three groups of top civil servants in 40 municipalities: chief administrative officers (assisted by chief budgeting officers), chief social service officers and chief education officers. Some of the questions are common to all three groups, e.g. questions about budgeting and priority ordering, about the municipal reforms, about the relation of the municipality to the Danish National Union of Municipalities (Kommunernes Landsforening) as well as questions about employment policy and trade policy