Through a glass darkly: Leadership complexity in Swedish local government

New management ideas aim to change the roles of local government politicians and administrators. The new ideas are poorly adjusted to the traditional role of councillors that was built on detailed knowledge and active participation in administrative practice. Leadership has now become even more full of contradictions; many demands are hard to reconcile. But, if any managers are good at handling complexity, it should be those in the local government sector. This article discusses, based on experiences from Sweden, how the complex interface between politics and administration is, or could be, handled by a dialogue between central actors