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The governance and leadership at transnational, national and school level seem to be converging into a number of isomorphic forms as we see a tendency towards substituting 'hard' forms of governance, that are legally binding, with 'soft' forms based on persuasion and advice. This article analyses and discusses governance forms at several levels. The first layer is the global: the methods of 'soft governance' that are being utilised by transnational agencies. The second layer is the national and local: the shift in national and local governance seen in many countries, but here demonstrated in the case of Denmark, and finally the third layer: the leadership used in Danish schools. The use of 'soft governance' is shifting the focus of governance and leadership from decisions towards influence and power and thus shifting the focus of the processes from the decision-making itself towards more focus on the premises for decision-making, and towards the follow-up on decision-making, the connecting phase because influence is exerted in all phases. From this new perspective we are interested in analysing new forms of influences like discourses and new social technologies. In order to get an overview and further the understanding of relations and the coherence of processes of influence/power/governance, the article introduces a communications model of decision-making processes as processes of influence.

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This article will set the context of democratic leadership in Scandinavian countries. This concept will be discussed in a dual perspective. On the one hand there are pressures to transform the governing of the schools towards a more 'rigorous' form of New Public Management (NPM) with models of leadership/management from the world of business and industry. This trend is affected by a new wave of economical and cultural globalisation, while the discourse of NPM is exerting a strong influence on how municipalities organize and govern the schools in Scandinavia Peters et al., 2000). On the other hand there is a growing consciousness of the need for sustaining trust and loyalty in the school as an organisation. This may be seen as an effect of European/Scandinavian societies becoming increasingly complex. These societies are often called hyper complex societies with no one single centre from which government can be exercised. The governing of the public sectors therefore has largely to rest on trust and communication (Kirkeby, 1998;Giddens, 1991;Thyssen, 2001). This article will discuss how Scandinavian school leaders try to cope with this dual pressure while maintaining distinctive aspects of Scandinavian educational culture. This is one of many dilemmas being faced by school leaders coming to terms with notions of accountability. As an illustration we will refer to some findings from an international research project in which Danish and Norwegian school leaders participated (Biott et al., 2001; Sugrue, 2003, forthcoming).