Does Recruitment Matter? Selecting Path and Role Definition

Abstract

Other contributions to this project have, not surprisingly, shown that recruitment to the top political position of local government in European cities is socially biased. Mayors and their equivalents are predominantly male, in most cases they held middle-class jobs prior to being elected to mayoral office, and they are now in their fifties. Many grew up in the municipality they now govern, and a relatively high proportion come from ‘political families’, that is to say, their families have a tradition of political involvement. A majority have university degrees. Closer examination of the manner in which they are recruited shows that many were supported in their electoral campaigns by partisan (indeed most are themselves members of political parties) and/or influential local community actors. Although there are variations between countries, whether they are dependent on varying institutional arrangements or different national and subnational political cultures, this is the dominant picture of social bias in the recruitment of the mayors in European cities given by Steyvers and Reynaert in Chapter 3 in this volume, while Johansson in Chapter 4 further investigates the gender dimension of recruitment.