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Political Leaders and Changing Local Democracy

Part of the book series: Governance and Public Management ((GPM))

Abstract

Political leadership at the local level has gained more and more interest in the scholarly and political debate during the last 20 years. Political leadership has been seen as necessary to overcome a highlighted democratic deficit by increasing accountability of core policy makers involved not only in policy making in the city hall but also in administrative reforms or in governance arrangements in which different societal actors play a crucial role. These debates about the importance of political leadership at the local level have had, for instance, a clear impact on the introduction of directly elected mayors in a number of European countries.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See for instance Mouritzen and Svara (2002), Berg and Rao (2005), Haus et al. (2005), Heinelt et al. (2006), Reynaert et al. (2009), Borraz and John (2004), Bäck et al. (2006), Steyvers et al. (2008), Guérin and Kerrouche (2008), Navarro-Yáñez et al. (2008).

  2. 2.

    However, for some countries the collected data could not be used for the all kinds of analysis due to low response rate in these countries (as will be explained in the next section).

  3. 3.

    This group consists mainly of scholars from the following countries: Austria (Werner Pleschberger), Belgium (Herwig Reynaert and Kristof Steyvers), Croatia (Dubravka Jurlina Alibegovic), Czech Republic (Daniel Čermák and Dan Ryšavý), England (Colin Copus and David Sweeting), France (Eric Kerrouche), Germany (Björn Egner and Hubert Heinelt), Greece (Panos Getimis and Nikos Hlepas), Hungary (Gabor Soós), Italy (Annick Magnier), the Netherlands (Bas Denters and Pieter-Jan Klok), Norway (Lawrence E. Rose and Signy Irene Vabo), Poland (Paweł Swianiewicz), Spain (Carlos Alba, Xavier Bertrana, Jaume Magre, Lluis Medir and Carmen Navarro), Sweden (Henry Bäck, David Karlsson and Anders Lidström) and Switzerland (Daniel Kübler). Not all mentioned scholars (mentioned in brackets) were involved in all surveys.

  4. 4.

    This survey covered not only European countries but also Australia and the United States.

  5. 5.

    Results of this survey were published by Klausen and Magnier (1998), Dahler-Larsen (2002), Mouritzen and Svara (2002). For results of the survey in Germany, see Heinelt and Haus (2002).

  6. 6.

    Comparative results of the POLLEADER survey were published in Bäck et al. (2006) whereas results for single countries or on particular issues were published separately (see Egner 2007 for Germany or Egner and Heinelt 2008 for mayors’ perception of the role of municipal councils).

  7. 7.

    Comparative results of the MAELG survey were published in a special issue of Lex Localis (2012, Vol. 10, No. 1) and a special issue of local government studies (2013, Vol. 39, No. 5) as well as in Egner et al. (2013b) and Heinelt (2014). In addition, partners involved in the survey published national results (like Egner et al. 2013a).

  8. 8.

    Unfortunately, only data for councillors could be used for comparative analysis because the responses of executive heads and the highest-ranking appointed civil servant or employee were too few in most countries (see for results Bertrana et al. 2016).

  9. 9.

    This was even the case for the last survey which was carried out—as mentioned above—in partnership with the COST project ‘Local Public Sector Reforms—an International Comparison’ (LocRef). Only meetings for a limited number of partners could be financed by this project.

  10. 10.

    In Belgium, the data collection was carried out by two teams: the researchers at the Université Catholique de Louvain dealt with the French-speaking region (Wallonia), while the researchers of the University of Ghent dealt with the Flemish area of the country.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to express our gratitude to the numerous colleagues who agreed to act as reviewers for single chapters and who helped to sharpen all drafts. This applies particularly to Henry Bäck who reviewed all chapters and gave helpful advice. However, it is of course the sole responsibility of the authors what is finally published in this book—and also of the editors.

We would also like to thank Yannic Kaub who invested a lot of time in painstakingly formatting this book.

The support of the following local government associations was particularly important for successfully conducting the survey in some countries: the Swiss Cities Association, the Austrian Association of Cities, the National Association of Italian Municipalities (ANCI) and the Dutch Mayors’ Association.

Some project partners received grants for carrying out the survey in their countries: The Italian team was supported by the Progetto Strategico di Ateneo 2015 of the University of Florence; the Polish team by the Polish National Science Centre (project ‘European political leaders in local governments’, grant no. 2015/18/M/HS5/00624); in Portugal Enrico Borghetto received support from the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia of Portugal (under Research Grant SFRH/BPD/89968/2012 and FCT Investigator Contract IF/00382/2014) and Daniel Čermák was supported by the Czech Science Foundation (grant ‘Evropský starosta II’, no. GA16-01331S)’.

Moreover, we thank Jemima Warren and the team at Palgrave Macmillan for the pleasant and patient cooperation.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Political Science, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

    Hubert Heinelt

  2. Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Florence, Florence, Italy

    Annick Magnier & Marcello Cabria

  3. Department of Political Sciences, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Herwig Reynaert

Authors
  1. Hubert Heinelt
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  2. Annick Magnier
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  3. Marcello Cabria
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  4. Herwig Reynaert
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Technische Universität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

    Hubert Heinelt

  2. Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Florence, Firenze, Italy

    Annick Magnier

  3. Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Florence, Firenze, Italy

    Marcello Cabria

  4. Wetenschappen, Vakgroep Politieke Wetenschappen, Gent, Belgium

    Herwig Reynaert

Appendices

Appendix 1: Countries Covered by and Partners Involved in the Survey

The following countries were covered by the survey carried out in 2015–2016 (by the mentioned partners):

  • Austria (Werner Pleschberger),

  • Belgium (Régis Dandoy, Jérémy Dodeigne, Vincent Jacquet, Johannes Rodenbach, Min Reuchamps, Herwig Reynaert, Kristof Steyvers),

  • Croatia (Ivan Koprić, Jasmina Džinić and Mihovil Škarica),

  • Cyprus (Andreas Kirlappos and Kalliope Agapiou-Josephides),

  • Czech Republic (Daniel Čermák, Renáta Mikešová, Josef Bernard and Dan Ryšavý),

  • Denmark (Morten Balle Hansen),

  • England (Colin Copus, Thom Oliver and David Sweeting),

  • Finland (Pekka Kettunen and Siv Sandberg),

  • France (Jacques de Maillard, Patrick Hassenteufel, Tanguy Le Goff, Eugénie Pétaillat),

  • Germany (Björn Egner, Hubert Heinelt, Sabine Kuhlmann, Markus Seyfried and Angelika Vetter),

  • Greece (Nikos Hlepas, Panagiotis Getimis, Alexandra Timotheou),

  • Hungary (Gábor Dobos, Zsófia Papp, Gábor Soós),

  • Iceland (Gretar Eythorsson, Eva Marin Hlynsdottir and Magnús Árni Skjöld Magnússon),

  • Ireland (Geraldine Robbins and Gerard Turley),

  • Israel (Itai Beeri and Eran Vigoda-Gadot),

  • Italy (Marcello Cabria and Annick Magnier),

  • Latvia (Iveta Reinholde),

  • Lithuania (Jurga Bucaite Vilke, Arvydas Mikalauskas and Aiste Lazauskiene),

  • The Netherlands (Bas Denters, Linze Schaap, Niels Karsten, Pieter-Jan Klok),

  • Norway (Jacob Aars, Lawrence E. Rose, Bjarte Folkestad and Signy Irene Vabo),

  • Poland (Adam Gendźwiłł, Joanna Krukowska, Marta Lackowska and Paweł Swianiewicz),

  • Portugal (Enrico Borghetto, Luís Vicente Baptista and Patrícia Pereira),

  • Romania (Andrei Gheorghiță, Cristina Stănuș),

  • Serbia (Vladan Djokić, Mina Petrović, Marija Maruna and Danijela Milojkić),

  • Slovakia (Daniel Klimovsky and Michaela Bátorová),

  • Slovenia (Irena Baclija Brajnik and Vladimir Prebilič),

  • Spain (Carmen Navarro, Jaume Magre, Lluis Medir and Esther Pano),

  • Sweden (Anders Lidström and David Karlsson),

  • Switzerland (Oliver Dlabac and Daniel Kübler, with support of Jasmin Gisiger, Roman Zwicky and Madlaina Bruderer).

Appendix 2: Seminars and Meetings of the Involved Partners

  • Ghent, Center for Local Politics, Ghent University: 23–24 January 2014: research design; declaration of thematic interests; start of the work on the questionnaire.

  • Ghent, Center for Local Politics, Ghent University: 13–14 May 2014: finalization of the questionnaire; agreements concerning the organization of data gathering, Planning of publications.

  • Florence, Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Florence, 23 January 2015: presentation of the research project to Cost members; discussion of methodological issues.

  • Florence, Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Florence, 23 February 2015: discussion on possible new insights on common scientific fields of interest and corresponding (publication) activities; definition of calendar.

  • Dubrovnik, Centre for Advanced Academic Studies (CASS), 5 May 2015 (COST conference): preparation of the book proposal and definition of thematic subgroups.

  • Bratislava, Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences, Comenius University in Bratislava, 13–14 November 2015 discussion about the progress of data collection and planned activities; separate meetings of the thematic subgroups.

  • Bensheim, Institute of Political Science, TU Darmstadt, 2–4 September 2016; discussion about the final dataset resulting from the survey; presentation of draft chapters for the common book.

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Heinelt, H., Magnier, A., Cabria, M., Reynaert, H. (2018). Introduction. In: Heinelt, H., Magnier, A., Cabria, M., Reynaert, H. (eds) Political Leaders and Changing Local Democracy . Governance and Public Management. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67410-0_1

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