This article describes and discusses cases of distributed leadership at several levels in schools in the light of changing political discourses and changing relations between the state and its institutions. It focuses on relations, leadership influences and communication in the whole school and in the classroom and by extension also discuss relations, influences and modes of instruction in the classroom. The empirical basis for the discussion is school leadership in the Danish context. It explores how contemporary government and management manifests itself in schools, how agents in schools react to it and how room for manoeuvre is being formed in order to give students conditions and frameworks so they can develop a ‘Democratic Bildung’.