Mayors and Local Administrators: A Puzzling Relationship

Abstract

Developing a better understanding on how political leaders perceive the role and position of civil servants and how both groups interrelate continues to be a relevant issue in the local government research agenda. Since their interaction has a non negligible impact on the capacity of governments to perform their tasks and implement their decisions, empirical efforts to acquire in-depth information on the outcome of interaction between these two sets of officials constitute invaluable additions to knowledge on the actual functioning of democracies. Even though elected officials and administrators also interact at the local level of government, general literature on bureaucrats and politicians has so far mainly focused on the relationship at the national level. But in city governments a similar type of ‘puzzling’ relationship can likewise be observed, although with its own specific traits. In this perspective, studies such as The Anonymous Leader (Klausen and Magnier 1998) or Leadership at the Apex (Mouritzen and Svara 2002), which address this specific issue at the local level, have represented important contributions to the field by identifying aspects common to the national and the local worlds as well as the significant distinctions. The empirical source upon which this chapter is based will allow us to add some elements to the analysis of what has been described as ‘the distinctive puzzle of the contemporary state, reflecting the clash between the dual and conflictive imperatives of technical effectiveness and democratic responsiveness’ (Aberbach, Putnam and Rockman 1981).