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Local government in Sweden is usually classified as the northwest European type of local government, together with the local government systems of the other Nordic countries and Britain. In the 1990s and the early years of the new millennium, Swedish local government has been especially susceptible to the ideas of ‘new public management’ (NPM). At the same time there has been a long‐ongoing trend of increasing party‐politicisation of local councils. In this paper a selection of five local authorities are examined in order to see how party politics and party‐politicisation are confronted by the new organisational doctrines. It is concluded that in this respect the doctrines guiding local government organisation can be characterised by three common traits: the legitimacy of particular interests is denied in favour of the common good of the locality; it is denied that conflict and competition between political parties perform any democratic function; finally, when it comes to the relation between politics and administration there is a common confession of the management‐by‐objectives doctrine. Somewhat surprisingly, these three principles guide organisation and politics not only in those authorities most enthusiastically adopting NPM but also in the authorities implementing organisational reforms based on more communitarian principles and even organisationally conservative municipalities not even considering any organisational change. One interpretation of this contradictory observation may be that NPM concepts and ideas have also found their way into local doctrines that are based on quite different principles. Another interpretation is that there is a consensus tradition in Swedish political culture that can also account for similar results in municipalities not explicitly introducing an apolitical organisation doctrine.

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Immigrants, who comprise a growing group in many European countries, are usually under‐represented in the political process. Sweden's immigrant policy, with its far‐reaching social and political rights, liberal citizenship laws and respect for cultural differences, is often regarded as an exemplary model of how to integrate immigrants in society. The 1975 electoral reform in Sweden gave immigrants the opportunity to become active in the democratic process by allowing foreign citizens to vote in local political elections. This article examines the political and organizational participation of immigrants. The findings indicate widespread and significant exclusion and under‐representation of immigrants in political and organizational life. We argue that immigrant political participation is best understood in terms of a tension between individual characteristics and institutional and organizational factors. In particular, the long‐term exclusion of large numbers of immigrants from labor related organizations is shown to be an important obstacle to their further social and political participation.