“Health in All Policies” in Norwegian municipalities—Dilemmas and lack of legitimacy and capacity

Abstract

AbstractAccording to the Health in All Policies (HiAP) approach, public health work in Norway is regarded as a multi‐actor collaboration based on planning and partnership for the purpose of enabling people to increase their control over their health and its determinants. HiAP builds largely on the governance and communicative turn in the public sector and thus exists in the shadow of a vertical government structure with sectors, silos and a chain of command. In practice, HiAP challenges the established way of thinking and acting in the silos and tries to create a more holistic understanding and handling of problems and needs. In order to successfully involve different sectors and government levels in this work, HiAP requires strong democratic legitimacy and institutional capacity. In this article, we discuss the empirical research data on the HiAP approach in Norway within the context of theory on collaborative planning processes and legitimising political capacity to act. Our research question is whether the HiAP approach in Norwegian municipalities have sufficient democratic legitimacy and institutional capacity to achieve the purpose of public health work. In general, we find that HIAP as practised in Norwegian municipalities does not function as a complete political legitimising and capacity building process. The practice contains several dilemmas, and there is a need to distinguish between different forms of legitimacy and capacity.