Legitimacy of uncertain policy work: Exploring values in local economic development projects

This article takes the standpoint that, due to high levels of uncertainty, local economic development work suffers from both input- and output-based legitimacy. Nevertheless, local governments are active development agents and try to come up with economic development initiatives. In order to better understand the legitimate basis for uncertain economic development work, this article offers an unconventional analysis of economic development projects. Drawing on scholars of organization theory, legitimacy is defined as congruence in values between the studied projects and the stakeholders in the surrounding environment. The article examines what kinds of values pervade local governments' economic development projects. The empirical material is based on thick interview and observation data derived from a study of eight local development projects in Sweden. The results show that values ofprofessionalizationanddeliberationpervade the analysed projects. Taking the two sets of values together, the results indicate that local government administration seeks to legitimize its economic development work as being based on professional directed processes of public deliberation. Both these sets of values challenge the local representative democratic system of government as the prime source of the legitimacy of local governments' interventions.