6.1 Introduction

The position of the municipal chief executive officer (MCEO) is the single most important administrative position at the Icelandic local government level. The legal framework around the MCEO position is rooted in a local government system established in the late nineteenth century and is mostly Danish in origin. However, the position of the Icelandic MCEO has developed into a special case of the Icelandic chief executive, with a complex mixture of Danish, Norwegian, and Icelandic traits. There are effectively three types of chief executives at the Icelandic local level: the executive mayor, the city manager (sometimes also referred to as council manager), and the old type of council leader. Each type represents a special form of government as the horizontal power structureFootnote 1 between political leadership and administration, and the principle of amateurism in local politics is affected by different types of organization. The importance and prestige of the MCEO position increased substantially in the late twentieth century, as more tasks and services were delegated to the Icelandic local level. Consequently, so did the public debate on internal power relations between politics and administration at the local level. This debate was specifically manifested in the role of the MCEO and the related public rhetoric. The focus of the chapter is twofold: First, it explores the special status of the Icelandic MCEO in relation to the other Nordic states. Second, it discusses the internal differences between various types of MCEOs and the consequences for the Icelandic system.

The chapter begins by examining the institutional preconditions of the MCEO position by describing the framework of the Icelandic local government system and its origins. This is followed by looking into the development of the MCEO position and how this has been influenced by both the legal framework around the Danish mayor and the Norwegian MCEO. Special focus is placed on the fact that the legal framework allows for the position to be occupied by either a local politician, making him/her a de facto executive mayor, or a professional hired through a job posting for the position. This provides an interesting angle as the role perceptions of these very different types of administrative leaders are expected to be divergent. This is followed by a discussion on the collective profile of the MCEO and how the different MCEO backgrounds (elected member of the council or not) may or may not affect their role perception.

6.2 Icelandic Local Government Structure

Iceland is the smallest of the five Nordic countries, with a population of around 390,000. Although it is geographically quite large, with 103,000 km2, residential areas are clustered mostly in the capital city of Reykjavík and its surrounding suburbs and hinterland. Thus, more than 80% of the country’s population lives within 100 km radius of the capital city. The rest of the population is unevenly distributed, mostly on the coastline, as the middle of the country is unhabitable. There are considerable size differences between individual municipalities, from around 40 residents in the smallest municipality to around 140,000 in the capital city of Reykjavík. In 2023, municipalities are still overwhelmingly small; out of a total of 64, there are only 9 municipalities with more than 5000 residents, 53 with less than 5000, 29 with less than 1000, and 16 with less than 500.

As part of the Danish Kingdom for several centuries from the fourteenth century onwards, the institutional design of government administration has strong Danish characteristics. Based on a Danish template, a new local government structure was introduced in Iceland in 1872. There was a separate act for each town (only Reykjavík at the beginning) and one collective act for the remaining municipalities. The new system was progressive in many ways and gave local authorities great power within their territories. However, the Icelandic situation was very different from that of the Danish. A good example is that the original Danish Act stipulated a special act for market towns, while in Iceland, around 80% of the population lived in rural areas, and existing villages were extremely small. Moreover, the number of towns remained small for a long time, only reaching 13 in the 1950s.

The foundation of local government as a council–committee system (Mouritzen & Svara, 2002) has remained remarkably stable. The municipal council is formally the most important decision-maker, as all decisions must be formally signed by the council. The most important subcommittee is the executive committee, which along with the MCEO is responsible for the daily management of the municipality. The executive committee, however, is only permitted in seven-member or larger councils. The number of additional standing committees varies considerably, so does the number of ad hoc committees. Local elections take place every four years and are normally proportional, using the D’Hondt method without a legal threshold. However, a small number of very small municipalities use a bloc voting system with a personal vote—without parties (Hlynsdóttir & Önnudóttir, 2022).

The overall number of council members is considerably smaller than the norm in the other Nordic countries, and turnover is high; typically, around 60% of all councillors are replaced every four years (Statistics Iceland, 2019). The Local Government Act (no. 138/2011) stipulates that council size should vary between 5 and 23 members depending on the size of the municipality. Municipalities with less than 2000 residents can choose between 5- and 7-member councils; municipalities with populations between 2000 and 9999 may choose 7-, 9-, or 11-member councils, and towns with 10,000–49,999 may choose between 11- and 15-member councils. Cities with more than 50,000 residents may choose between 23- and 31-member councils. The Reykjavík city council is the only council in the last group with 23 members. Following the local government election in 2022, five- (23) or seven-member (22) councils were the most common council sizes, accounting for 70% of all local councils. Local government is organized on a single tier, and the system is symmetrical, legally stipulating that all municipalities have the same tasks and obligations towards their citizens.

As shown in Hlynsdóttir, Cregård, and Sandberg of this volume, the subnational government share of GDP, government expenditure, and staff expenditure is now similar to (although slightly lower) that of the other Nordic countries. The heavy emphasis on decentralization on behalf of the central state has had a significant effect on the organization of politics and administration, both in relation to the internal organization of the administration and the task division between the political and administrative arms of government.

In the early 1990s, it is estimated that the Icelandic municipal level was responsible for around 20% of public expenditures (Eythórsson, 1999); in 2019, this proportion was closer to 30% (OECD/UCLG, 2019). Tasks were not equally distributed between municipalities, making the system somewhat asymmetrical, as the bulk of municipalities were very small (less than 500). In most of these municipalities, there was no waste or water management, no sewage management, social services, or kindergartens, all of which are tasks that municipalities in general were expected to provide but were in this case solved by individuals themselves.

In the early 1990s, ideas began to emerge about changing the functional and territorial organization of the Icelandic local government system. The territorial restructuring faltered, but the government continued with its plan for functional reform. In 1996, the responsibility for primary school education was moved to the local level, and in 2011, services for the disabled followed. These two large, labour-intensive tasks as well as the need for regulations around spatial planning and other general changes to the task division between state and local government, completely altered the internal organization of municipalities during this period. The need for local authorities to provide quality services at a competitive price also pushed local governments to develop an extremely wide-ranging and complex system of inter-municipal cooperation (IMC). A 2016 survey set the number types of IMC at around 320, with each municipality participating in an average of 23 IMCs (Jóhannesson et al., 2016). Such schemes could include corporate set-ups, joint facilities, contracts with private companies, and service contracts with other municipalities. In the most extreme cases, municipalities outsourced most of their responsibilities, usually to a neighbouring municipality, a situation especially common in municipalities with less than 500 residents.

Local administrations are generally very small, with a majority of municipalities employing around 5–10 personnel (including the MCEO) in the city hall. This changes around the population threshold of 3000, where the number of city hall employees rises steeply. Consequently, only a handful of municipalities can set up a formal administrative structure with the separate departments or boards of CEOs normally found, for example, in Danish and Swedish municipalities. The small size of city hall also indicates that interaction between the political and administrative arms of government is both informal and tainted by the political machinery.

When local authorities took on more tasks, the workload and responsibilities of the MCEO increased; however, so did the prestige and popularity of the position. The MCEO is generally the highest paid official within Icelandic local administration and has a central position in relation to internal interactions with the local administration, politics, and local civic society as well as externally with other municipalities, private partners, and central government institutions. This special situation of the MCEO can be traced back to its origin in the late nineteenth century.

6.3 The Origin of the Icelandic Local Chief Executive Position

As the initial Local Government Act was introduced in 1872, there seems to have been a consensus among the members of parliament of its importance. The question of how to organize the management of the town of Reykjavík, however, was the subject of significant parliamentary debate. According to the Danish model, there were two important leadership positions at the local level. The first was an individual appointed by the central government, who was equivalent to a magistrate (bæjarfógeti), and the second was a type of city manager who was both the leader of the council and the day-to-day manager of the town. While both positions were management-oriented, there was an important difference, as the latter was more political; this individual could either be an elected member of the council or hired from outside the council.

In the Icelandic case, the decision was made to fuse these two positions, and therefore, town councils consisted of elected members and the magistrate, who was also automatically the leader of the town council. This position may be compared to the modern-day Dutch mayor (Denters et al., 2005). At the beginning, the magistrate did not have voting rights within the council; however, this soon changed, and in some towns, the magistrate had the same voting rights as elected members of the council. The magistrate was, in fact, a government official, as they were appointed by the central government to the town magistrate position.

Many council members resented the fact that a centrally appointed magistrate was positioned within locally elected councils. In the case of Reykjavík, the position of the magistrate was soon removed from the city council, thereby ending direct influence of central government in city council affairs. In place of the magistrate, the position of chief executive was established. At the beginning, the chief executive was also the leader of the council, similar to the magistrate type. Later, a special position for the council leader was established in towns where a chief executive was appointed. However, the most important addition to individual town acts came in 1907, where the council of Hafnarfjörður added a new clause in their council act stating that the town chief executive was only eligible to vote in council meetings if he was an elected council member as well. This clause paved the way for the development of the modern double system in relation to the management of local authorities. On one hand, there was the possibility for a member of the council to become chief executive, thus an executive mayor; on the other hand, the suggestion was to hire someone from outside the council to manage the day-to-day activities of the council. The addition of this clause into the Icelandic town acts was also a clear break from the Danish tradition, as there was no equivalent in Danish law.

The situation in the remaining municipalities in the late nineteenth century differed substantially, as the council leader was simultaneously the political leader and manager. In rural areas and villages without town rights, a bloc voting system with a personal vote was applied, albeit without parties. All eligible members of the community could be voted for, and the individual with the highest number of votes usually became the leader of the council, an equivalent to the modern notion of mayor, although formally appointed by the council. This individual would then lead the council meetings and handle the daily management of the municipality. The old type of council leader was essentially a community leader with a high level of direct access to central government. The remnants of this system are still visible today in the smallest Icelandic municipalities (Hlynsdóttir, 2016a; Page & Goldsmith, 1987).

Municipalities consisting of rural areas and small villages were not allowed to hire a manager. The council leader was legally required to take care of the day-to-day management of the local authority. By the late 1940s, this had become a problem for many of them, as daily management had expanded in a way that was beyond the capacity of a single individual. In parliament, the idea of setting up a similar system as the Norwegian MCEO (rådmann) was introduced. Originally, the idea was to make it mandatory for municipalities with more than 500 inhabitants to hire an MCEO, and this person was supposed to be hired independent of the election term. The idea was to make the position professional and as independent as possible of political influence. However, when the act finally passed through parliament in the early 1950s, significant changes had been made to the original proposal. Fundamentally, the idea behind the MCEO position in towns and rural municipalities was the same; it was supposed to be a full-time worker who could assist council members with their work.

Municipalities were permitted, but not obligated, to hire an MCEO (in 2012, it finally became mandatory for all municipalities to hire an MCEO). Unlike in the towns, the position of MCEO had to be advertised; therefore, the law did not permit council members to become managers. However, the differences between rural and urban MCEOs were mostly eliminated within a few years. The rule of advertisement for the rural manager was lifted, and managers in rural municipalities were also allowed to be members of the council, albeit without voting rights. The final change was to make the term of employment four years, the same as the election term. During this era, changes were usually not made within the election term unless the MCEO left office voluntarily. Thus, the general idea was that MCEOs could not be fired without good reason. However, a 2001 Supreme Court ruling established beyond doubt that the post was so tightly connected to the majority of the council that any disruption in trust between the MCEO and the majority or changes in the majority were a justifiable reason for the MCEO in question to be fired (Valsson, 2014). This was confirmed in a statement by the Icelandic Ombudsman in 2018 in a dispute concerning whether the recruitment process of a city manager should be purely merit-based or not (Umboðsmaður Alþingis [Ombudsman], 2018). In short, this established a political stronghold over the MCEO position, as they can be removed from their position by a council majority at any time.

In sum, the local council was given free rein to decide on when, how, and whom to hire for the position of MCEO. Since these changes were made in the early 1960s, the Local Government Act has been revised three times but with no major changes to the role of the MCEO or the division of power and authority between the MCEO and the council or political leadership. Thus, the formal structure of the Icelandic MCEO position has remained relatively unchanged since the mid-twentieth century.Footnote 2

6.4 Forms of Government and Legal Foundations

There are two main articles in the Local Government Act stipulating the legal framework for the appointment of the MCEO or municipal administrator, as referred to in the official translation. The first addresses the appointment of the MCEO, while the second article addresses the area of responsibility. The law makes no distinction between the executive mayor, the old council leader, and the city manager types of MCEO, with the exception of the chief executive’s right to vote if they are a member of the council.

These articles are partially based on a Danish template (with a Norwegian twist) used to describe the responsibilities of the Danish mayor. Like the Danish mayor, the Icelandic executive mayor is the head of the administration. Likewise, they both share responsibility for budgeting and finances with the executive board (if there is one) as well as signing legally binding documents on behalf of the municipality. They prepare and organize meetings, although they never lead them. The role of the council leader is normally never combined with that of the executive mayor, and in the case of the executive mayor, another politician takes over the role of the council leader.

In the Danish case, it is also possible to define other mayoral duties in a local ordinance. There is a similar clause in the Icelandic Act (§55), which is crucial because of the complexity of the position. The article states that Icelandic local councils should describe the division of labour between the council and the administration in the local ordinance. However, this is rarely done, and when it is, the description is usually vague and more or less repeats the legal framework. However, and unlike the Danish case, the Icelandic executive mayor is the chief executive in every sense of the word, which became very obvious when the comic Jón Gnarr was elected to the city council of Reykjavík in 2010 and consequently became the executive mayor of Reykjavík. In the following years, he was heavily criticized for not being ‘executive’ enough, and it was pointed out on several occasions that he was not a ‘real’ mayor because he actively assigned his executive responsibilities to top city hall managers (Hlynsdóttir, 2016b). This differs from the Danish mayor, who does not have the authority to hire staff and may well choose to stay out of daily administration altogether (Berg & Kjær, 2005). Conversely, the Norwegian mayor has no administrative responsibilities of any kind (Willumsen, 2014).

Thus, the crucial difference between the Icelandic case and similar articles in the Danish and Norwegian local government law is that local government articles that only refer to political leaders in Norway and Denmark are used to define the work of the MCEO in Iceland. This has added to the flexibility of the role of the Icelandic MCEO, albeit with added complexity. This also means that unlike the Danish case, where the Local Government Act is silent on the role of the MCEO, it is the other way around in the Icelandic Local Government Act, where the MCEO role is well defined, but that of political leadership is not.

A popular model for the organization of politics and administration at the local level is the politics–administration dichotomy model. Recently, Icelandic public rhetoric on the position of the MCEO emphasized the neutrality of the administration, and political interference in administration is seen as a potential source of corruption (Kristinsson, 2014). This is in line with a model that Demir (2009) labelled the ‘separation school’, which stresses the polarization of the political and administrative relationship. However, the legal framework and practice of the internal municipal organization constitute a mixture of an approach called the ‘political school’ (which posits that top administrators should share the values and political beliefs of elected officials) and another called the ‘interaction school’ (which stresses an overlapping approach). Research has also revealed that the overlapping model is a more common version of the interaction between administration and politics (Svara, 2006), and findings have shown this model to be more popular (Mouritzen & Svara, 2002).

In the Icelandic case, the discrepancy between the practical approach to the MCEO position and the ideological stance of citizens poses problems. This became evident in the months following the 2018 local elections when local councils in some cases tried to enhance their credibility and legitimacy by hiring a city manager type of chief executive. At the same time, there were accusations of deception on behalf of the local councils. Thus, the Icelandic ombudsman pointed out in his decision on the issue of the appointment of chief executives that local councils should not advertise merit-based job postings for the MCEO position unless they intend to use it accordingly (Umboðsmaður Alþingis [Ombudsman], 2018).

The three distinct types of MCEOs represent three different forms of government, as changes in the form of the MCEO position also led to changes in horizontal power relations within the local authority. It is not uncommon for countries to rely on several forms of government at the local level. An excellent example is the United States, which deploys two forms of local government: the city manager and the strong mayor. This has also been experimented with in Finland (Sandberg, this volume). The Icelandic case is special because it moves between different forms of government, both between and within election terms. Therefore, there is no legal restraint on how and when to deploy different forms of government. This situation is obviously very different from that in the United States, where changes between forms of government are heavily regulated (Nelson & Svara, 2010). Normally municipalities appoint an MCEO in the first few months after local elections. However, previous research has shown that it is normal for up to 30% of municipal councils to change the MCEO again sometime during an election term (Hlynsdóttir, 2020). A compilation by the author for the municipal term 2018–2022 showed that 22% of the municipalities had changed the MCEO, and in four cases, there was a move from one form of government to another.

The most popular form of government is that of the city manager. A typical administrative setting is shown in Fig. 6.1. Here, the mayor often serves as a full-time politician, while another individual is hired to be the city manager or the MCEO. This form bears some resemblance to both the Finnish and Norwegian cases as well as the city manager form of government in the United States. However, there is very little formal guidance on how to organize this form of government, and thus, the clear administrative separation found in Norway is normally absent in the Icelandic case. Nevertheless, this form gives the local administration leverage against political decision-making. To add to the confusion, five-member municipal councils do not have an executive committee. The structure in Fig. 6.1 is therefore typical for larger municipalities with at least 1000 residents. The main purpose of this form of government has been to increase professionalism at the local level normally manifested in the persona of the MCEO (Hlynsdóttir, 2020). This form of government has become increasingly popular, although municipalities are less likely to use it as population size increases, and it is very rare for cities with more than 10,000 to deploy it. In 2019, 67% of all municipalities used this form of local government.

Fig. 6.1
An illustration of the Icelandic city manager style of political-administrative structure. It has an interconnected political and administrative management structure. Former includes 5 to 23 locally elected politicians and the latter includes sector C E Os and service-providing bodies.

The Icelandic city manager style of political–administrative structure

Note: Dotted arrows from the municipal council indicate that the mayor, the executive committee, the standing committees, and their chairs are all elected by the majority of the municipal council after the election. Two-way arrows indicate triangles of frequent interaction related to decision-making and coordination. One-way arrows indicate the typical decision-making process. Arrow with small dots indicates that the MCEO is appointed by the municipal council. The same body has the authority to set him or her aside

Full size image

In many ways, the framework is similar to the Danish template demonstrated in the introductory chapter by Hansen et al. in this volume. However, there are some important differences; for example, there are many cases of municipalities where there is no executive committee. Mayors are also not necessarily employed full time in their mayoral positions. There are also indications of standing committees not having the authority ascribed to them by this model; thus, they have considerably less authority than their Danish counterparts. Furthermore, the administrative part of the figure shows a common layout of decision-making bodies at the local level. Nevertheless, there are cases where there are no sector CEOs and a very limited number of administrative or even service-providing bodies. The number of administrative and service-providing bodies set up as separate joint facilities outside the municipal organization further complicates the matter, as it makes it difficult for the MCEO to manage such facilities due to the collaborative set up of many owners.

The second form of government in Fig. 6.2 is the executive mayor. In this form, the mayor serves as a full-time politician as well as a full-time MCEO. Therefore, this individual has responsibilities in both the political realm of government and the administrative sphere. It must be pointed out that in most cases, another politician takes on the responsibility of leading the council. The executive mayor is very similar to the Danish mayor. However, it may be argued that due to how the position of the MCEO is stipulated in the Icelandic Local Government Act, it puts emphasis on the management responsibilities of an executive mayor while also diminishing their political role. Findings from a previous study showed exactly this, as executive mayors were prone to highlight their management role while downplaying their role as politicians, thereby effectively seeking to argue that they were managers first and politicians second (Hlynsdóttir, 2016b). Before the 2008 financial crisis, this form of government was very popular, with around 39% of all municipalities using it in 2006–2010. However, due to heavy criticism in the aftermath of the crisis, a majority of councils opted for the more politically neutral city manager form of government, hiring MCEOs through job advertisements after the 2010 local elections. In 2019, 20% of all municipalities opted for this type of government, most of them very large municipalities.

Fig. 6.2
An illustration of the Icelandic city manager style of political-administrative structure. It has an interconnected political and administrative management structure. Former includes 5 to 23 locally elected politicians and the latter includes sector C E Os and service-providing bodies.

The Icelandic executive mayor style of political–administrative structure

Note: Dotted arrows from the municipal council indicate that the mayor, the executive committee, the standing committees, and their chairs are all elected by the majority of the municipal council after the election. Two-way arrows indicate triangles of frequent interaction related to decision-making and coordination. One-way arrows indicate the typical decision-making process. Arrow with small dots indicates that the MCEO is appointed by the municipal council. The same body has the authority to set him or her aside

Full size image

The same problems described in Fig. 6.1 are also prevalent in this form of government; for example, there are no executive board in very small municipalities, and there is a lack of administrative competence. However, as this form of government is more often used in larger municipalities, these problems tend not to be as severe as in the city manager form of government. Thus, the executive mayor is more likely to have strong support from the administration. The figure shows the position of the council leader at the upper-left corner of the model. Essentially, this model is all about political strength and leadership, very much stressing Demir’s (2009) ‘political school’ of thought, while the city manager model is more interactive and balances political and administrative representation within the system.

The third and final form of local government, the old council leader type, is perhaps the most community-driven of all three forms. In this type of government, local government is made of a five-member council, standing committees, and their leaders. In many cases, administrative and service bodies are non-existent, as municipalities receive services from private providers or neighbouring municipalities, de facto removing the lower part of the management structure altogether and leaving only the upper political part of the model. This means that the mayor is simultaneously the council leader, manager, and political leader. Elections are usually not proportional, but a bloc voting system is used with a personal vote and parties (Hlynsdóttir & Önnudóttir, 2022). The five individuals with the highest number of votes become elected members of the council. Municipalities using this type of government normally have less than 200 citizens and limited staff or none at all (although there are notable exceptions). In 2019, 13% of municipalities used this form of government.

As demonstrated, there may be enormous differences among municipalities in terms of the political–administrative management structure. It is therefore of interest to explore whether these differences in forms of government are also visible in the collective profile of the modern MCEO.

6.5 The Collective Profile of the Modern Icelandic MCEO

Although the Icelandic MCEO is one of the oldest positions within local government, studies on the position are rare, often only addressing a small number of MCEOs from the largest municipalities (Kristinsson, 2001). However, a survey conducted by the author in 2011 among all MCEOs in Iceland (N = 74, response rate was 100%) was based on the UDiTE study, which laid the foundation for the 2019 Nordic MCEO survey which was sent to all Icelandic MCEOs in march 2019 (N = 71, response rate N = 64/90%). One municipality was recruiting a new MCEO and was not included in the study.

Several factors should be noted in any study of Icelandic MCEOs. The first is the fundamental difference between different types of MCEOs, while the second involves the frequent changes during the election term. In this discussion, the number of MCEOs in relation to the surveys is based on the situation at the exact point in time when the surveys were conducted (December 2011 and March 2019).

The overall number of municipalities in Iceland has decreased from around 200 in the early 1990s to 64 in 2022. The number of municipalities formally employing an MCEO has, however, remained remarkably stable during this time, varying between 60 and 70. The remaining municipalities used the old council type of MCEO, which was not formally recognized as a chief executive position until 2012. Most of the municipalities employing an MCEO in the second half of the twentieth century were towns and villages along the coastline. Most of the small rural municipalities did not begin to hire MCEOs until well after 1990. This trend coincides with the growing number of tasks that municipalities are responsible for. The number of executive mayors increased in the early 1990s and has remained above 20% since, peaking in 2006 at 39%. The author’s analysis shows that most of the larger municipalities with more than 5000 inhabitants employed an executive mayor from 1990 onwards and that this trend continued until the 2010 local elections.

Although there are examples of both types of MCEOs staying in office for an extended period, frequent changes are more prevalent. For example, at the beginning of the 2006 and 2010 election terms, around 50% of municipalities hired new MCEOs. In 2014, the proportion decreased to 33% and up again in 2018 to around 50%. Therefore, it seems that MCEOs cannot expect a stable work environment and increasingly so. The average time for an individual in an MCEO position decreased in the period from 2011 to 2019 from 6.4 years on average in 2011 to 4.0 years on average in 2019. The differences in tenure between the different types of MCEOs have also decreased; in 2011, executive mayors had been in their position for an average of 4.2 years, city managers for 6.6 years, and old council leaders for nine years. In 2019, the corresponding figures were 5.3 for executive mayors, 3.5 for city managers, and 4 years for old council leaders. One plausible explanation for these fluctuations is that in the 2011 study, several individuals in the city manager and council leader groups had been in their positions for several election cycles.

To exemplify, one individual had served for 41 years as an MCEO of the old council leader type. These long-serving individuals have now all left. Moreover, a majority of MCEOs have only served in one municipality. Individuals serving in more than one municipality have often served as executive mayors and then moved somewhere else to take on the role of city manager in another municipality. The career track where individuals move from smaller municipalities to larger and more prestigious ones has been observed, but such cases remain rare, with only 22% of MCEOs in 2019 having served in another municipality (see Hlynsdóttir, 2020, for more discussion on this topic). Another version is when the career track goes into reverse, when individuals are hired as city managers and then run for council in the next election and become executive mayors. There were a few examples in this study where an individual was a city manager in the 2011 survey and had become an executive mayor in the 2019 Nordic MCEO survey.Footnote 3

How MCEOs are selected varies greatly. Several scenarios are possible: (1) Political parties announce their intention to appoint a specific individual as executive mayor, then set up the election as a choice between different individuals for executive mayor; (2) parties announce their intention to keep the current city manager, then set up elections as a choice for the person in question; (3) parties announce their intention to hire a professional MCEO without revealing preferences for a specific individual. The process of hiring an MCEO may then take place via job advertisements or head hunting. In recent years, the process of hiring through job postings has become increasingly popular and is often used as evidence of a fair and merit-based MCEO selection. It is common for the city manager type of MCEO to have a family background in the municipality in question. This is often highlighted in the hiring process, as the individuals in question are advertised as capable people with the extra qualification of being local sons and daughters.

Traditionally, the position of the Icelandic MCEO has been male-dominated. It is only in the last few decades that the number of female MCEOs has begun rising, reaching 32.4% in 2011 and 36% in 2019. The proportion of female MCEOs rose steeply following the local elections in 2010, with more than half of all new recruits at the time being female. However, at the local level, women tend to have a much more difficult time getting into pure management positions, such as city manager, than mixed political and management positions, such as executive mayor. Thus, when we look only at the proportion of female city managers, the proportion of female chief executives is 31%. This is somewhat lower than the Swedish case, similar to the Norwegian case, higher than the Finnish case, and much higher than the Danish case.

It is rare to hire very young people for the MCEO position. The average age was 52 years in 2019 and 50 years in 2011. However, findings have shown that city managers tend to be younger than the other types of MCEOs when they are first hired. Also, in the first survey period in 2011, there were considerable differences between the ages of the three types of MCEOs, with the city manager type being an average of 54 years old, the executive mayor 51, and the city manager 48. These differences had disappeared by 2019.

There is no specific educational requirement for the MCEO position. Therefore, unlike Denmark, for example, where municipal apprenticeshipsFootnote 4 are common, this is not the case of Iceland, with social science being the most common educational background in 2011 and 2019 (66% and 68%, respectively), from which business and economics were by far the most common disciplines. Similar findings were reported in a 2001 study by Kristinsson, although the differences between disciplines were not as stark, with social science accounting for around 50% of the respondents. However, at the time, a background in a technical or engineering discipline was still common with 26% of the respondents compared to 5.7% in 2019.

There were some differences between the various types of MCEOs. For example, a majority of the respondents in the old council leader type group only had a high school diploma or less (63%), while this number was around 10% for the other two types of MCEOs. Previous findings have also shown that the level of education among Icelandic MCEOs is correlated with size: The smaller the municipality, the less educated the chief executive. Moreover, civil servants at the national government level were traditionally better educated than the corresponding individuals at the local level. Although this has changed in the past few decades, the idea that managing a municipality is something that anyone can do as long their heart burns for the community (Kristinsson, 2001) remains prevalent. This conclusion is supported by the lack of clear role descriptions and common merits for the position (Hlynsdóttir, 2020).

To sum up, the Icelandic MCEO is most often a middle-aged man educated in business or economics. However, there is a considerable number of younger MCEOs, and the percentage of female MCEOs has been rising. Nevertheless, it is clear that there is no formal career track for the Icelandic MCEO within the local government system. This is supported by the fact that there is no formal entry mechanism and that as long as MCEOs have the welfare of their community in mind, they are eligible for the position. Thus, it is still very far from being a secure career track in Iceland in the same way as in Denmark and, to a lesser extent, Norway.

6.6 Leadership Expectations

The decentralization of welfare tasks onto the local level only began in the early 1990s. Thus, the development of the local government administration is a relatively recent phenomenon, although the position of the MCEO has existed in some form for 150 years. This is visible in the lack of research on local government, especially in relation to the management of Icelandic local government. Consequently, the comparative and longitudinal data that exist in the other Nordic countries are practically non-existent in the Icelandic case. Thus, the main focus here is on the comparative MCEO survey from 2019 and, wherever possible, another from 2011.Footnote 5

In the 2011 and 2019 surveys, MCEOs were asked to rate the influence of several actors in local government. The names and number of actors were adjusted to the Icelandic case to reflect the power structure and the horizontal power division of the Icelandic local government system. The standard deviation was much higher in the 2019 than in the 2011 survey, suggesting that there was more variation within the groups now than before. Table 6.1 shows that the most influential actors were politicians, with the leader of the executive board and the executive mayor scoring considerably higher than the mayor in the city manager form of government. This suggests the increased importance of the executive board and the leader of the executive board in relation to the power division between the political leadership positions at the local level. However, the mayor’s influence was still ranked highly, and so was the majority in the council, again underscoring the political centrality of the council in Icelandic local politics. Individual committee chairs, however, did not seem to be very influential, moving from medium influence in 2011 to low in 2019. Moreover, the city manager was ranked lower in 2019 than in 2011, moving from high to medium influence. Other actors were not seen as very relevant in the power structure of the system.

Table 6.1 Icelandic MCEOs’ perceptions of actor influence
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However, the numbers in Table 6.1 hide an interesting fact. If the perception of actor influence is grouped according to the types of executive mayors and city managers,Footnote 6 an interesting difference comes to light. As pointed out earlier in this chapter, the Icelandic horizontal power division is extremely complex, potentially affecting how different groups respond to the question of actor influence. In 2011, both types identified the leader of the executive board as the most influential actor, with the city managers remaining consistent in their perception in 2019 and the executive mayors changing their tone and now identifying their own position as most influential. However, what both Tables 6.1 and 6.2 reveal is the strong position of politics and political leaders within the Icelandic system, suggesting a tendency towards a ‘strong man’ culture where there is a strong local leader who fronts the community publicly and is able to make decisions in an efficient and preferably expeditious way.

Table 6.2 Different types of MCEOs and their perceptions of top leadership actor influence
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Two oppositional ideas remain prevalent in Iceland in relation to the role of the MCEO. One argument goes that it is more efficient to employ an executive mayor for the role of MCEO, while the other posits that hiring a city manager will provide professional status to the role of MCEO. Both sides argue that their approach is more democratic. However, embedded in both arguments is the belief that the actor trumps the structure—in other words, individuals are able to bend the MCEO position to their will. However, when we look at the MCEOs’ perceptions of the ideal politician in Table 6.3, we see remarkable similarities between the two groups of actors, both in relation to their notion of the ideal politician and their own leadership priorities. Both types placed heavy emphasis on roles that focus on the community and working on behalf of the community for the ideal politician. Nevertheless, it is interesting that only around half of the two types of respondents believed that politicians should be spokespersons for their own political parties. This suggests that local politics are not strongly influenced by national politics, an argument advanced in another context (Kristinsson, 2010). Another interesting point is that neither type (especially the city managers) thought that the ideal politician should be a spokesperson vis-à-vis the press. This last point is interesting, as being a spokesperson of a local community is often viewed as an essential role of local politicians. However, it is normal for Icelandic MCEOs of all types to be spokespersons for their municipality.

Table 6.3 Ideal politician perceptions of Icelandic MCEOs in 2019
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Table 6.4 presents the leadership priorities of different types of MCEO, again showing remarkable similarities. In relation to administration, the findings suggest that the structure of the MCEO position may be determined by something other than the individual. Regarding advice to politicians, Icelandic MCEOs are generally reluctant to mix openly with the political majority, although they are more likely to do so in relation to technical advice. Political majorities in local councils often consist of coalition government. Thus, it is not uncommon for the executive mayor to be the leader of one party and the leader of the council or executive board to be the leader of a different party. This may partially explain why executive mayors do not necessarily like to give advice to other political leaders in their own local government.

However, there is a major difference between the priorities of the executive mayor and the city manager in relation to the question of developing and implementing norms concerning the proper roles of politicians vis-à-vis bureaucrats. Executive mayors emphasized this considerably more than the city managers. As such, it is important to remember that the proximity between administration and politics is much greater and more obscure than at the national level. Moreover, it has been argued that politicians tend to meddle with administrative tasks (Rósinberg, 2022). Previous research has also shown that because executive mayors are often accused of political interference, they tend to overemphasize the separation between themselves as politicians on one hand and the head of administration on the other (Hlynsdóttir, 2016a). In relation to integration and cooperation, both types are very similar in terms of ideas, although executive mayors are less likely to place emphasis on being informed about employee viewpoints. Finally, both types position innovation high on the agenda, although attracting external resources is the least preferred priority of this group.

Table 6.4 Perceived leadership priorities of Icelandic MCEOs in 2019
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6.7 The Chief Executive Position in Hindsight

The analysis of the Icelandic MCEO shows that the position of elected politicians is very strong within the Icelandic system. Thus, although the position of the city manager has gained popularity, this type of manager is not seen as very influential compared to the other types of chief executives or political leaders in the council. However, the overall views of MCEOs are surprisingly similar on what an ideal politician should be doing or how their leadership prioritizes. Consequently, these findings support previous findings on the role of the MCEO as essentially a management role, with the main perceptual differences between the various types being how they view the interaction between administration and politics and the powerplay between these two areas of local governance.

Overall, there seems to be a much clearer division in the other Nordic countries (at least in form) between the local government administration and the elected representative arm of local government (Sletnes, 2015). One reason for this confusion in the Icelandic system is that the legal articles used to define the role of mayors in the Norwegian and Danish cases are used to define the MCEO role in the Icelandic case. The Icelandic Act separates the roles of the city manager and executive mayor with a single sentence: ‘the municipal administrator shall attend meetings of the council, where he/she has the right to speak and to propose motions, but not the right to vote unless he/she is an elected member of the council’. Consequently, from the beginning, the main aim in the development of the MCEO position has been to maintain the influence of elected members over the administration. This tendency is especially visible in the government form of executive mayor. The other issue is economic in nature, as most municipalities in Iceland were and are small by any comparison, and the position of the MCEO is normally the costliest within the system. It may be argued that this did not pose problems early on; however, as more tasks have been delegated onto the local level, the stakes have become higher and the flaws in the system have become more obvious. This has led to increased criticism from the public, resulting in increased demand of more ‘professionalism’ at the local level (Hlynsdóttir, 2016b).

In general, the Icelandic local government administration is still very much influenced by the logic of traditional public administration, while later ideas of new public management or neo-Weberian ideas are less visible at the apex of local government. In sum, political MCEOs (the executive mayor and the old type of council leader) are an anomaly in the Nordic institutional context. The Icelandic city manager type of MCEO is much closer to the MCEOs of the other Nordic countries. There is a strong public sentiment in favour of the more professional type over the more political variant. Nevertheless, larger municipalities and cities still have a preference for politicians serving as MCEOs, a trend that seems to be on the rise again following the 2022 local elections. Thus, the ideological debate between advocates of different schools of thought on the political–administrative organization in Iceland is far from over.