Page - (000320) - in Knowledge and Networks

318 Lee & van de Meene, 2012; Meseguer, 2005). The survey question used to elicit the municipal learning network was: “What other municipalities have you drawn important lessons from within your field during the last election period (since January 2007)?” In response, municipal managers could mention as many other municipalities as they liked. A web survey was distributed as a first step, with three follow-up reminders. We then distributed a somewhat shorter version as a postal survey in a second step. This led to a response rate of 78 %. The remaining nonrespondents were telephoned, producing a 100 % response rate on the learning question.3 The information that can be spread among municipal head managers is of a diverse character because a wide range of policy decisions are handled in the munic- ipal executive boards. Overarching issues like budgets, policies, programs, guide- lines, and various action plans (e.g., wind power plans and school plans) are within the managers’ purview. Somewhat more limited decisions are also frequently made, such as whether to shut down a certain school or where to locate a recycling station. Moreover, the committees handle minor issues such as what documents should be archived and for how long. We do not know exactly what issues respondents had in mind when answering our question, but they all have equivalent positions within the municipalities and were asked about lessons learned within their field, which includes all issues handled by the municipal executive boards. Furthermore, they were explicitly told to ignore issues that do not reach the political level and “routine matters” concerning individual citizens. In addition to the key question, we use some other questions from the survey in order to describe learning processes in Swedish municipalities in more detail. Moreover, a series of interviews with municipal officials was conducted in order to develop a more qualitative understanding of how municipalities use knowledge to make policy decisions. Semistructured, open-ended interviews were conducted with 40 politicians and civil servants in six municipalities. These municipalities were strategically selected to maximize variation (two large, two medium-sized, and two small municipalities). For each pair, one municipality had a stable social democratic majority and the other had shifting majorities. The interviews lasted from 45 to 90 min and were recorded. Although we do not report systematically on these inter- views in this chapter, they do provide some background information for our inter- pretation of learning networks. Local Learning Through Informal Personal Connections A first step in the analysis is to explore how important information from other municipalities is in municipal decision-making. We also want to know what chan- nels are used to collect information. Table 15.1 provides some basic statistics on 3 Note that the other survey questions presented in this chapter are based on a somewhat smaller sample (i.e., about 78 % of the population). C. Ansell et al.