Political Leaders in European Cities
(second round)
A first round of the survey ’Political Leaders in European Cities’, dedicated to the figure
and the role of mayors in great and medium size cities around Europe, was developed more
than ten years ago. Through the present “replication”, we want to check the more recent
changes occurred in this decade in a little selection of aspects of particular importance,
concerning the recruitment, the career, the interpretation of the role and of local democracy,
and to focus further on mayors' choices in local policies and on their position in the most
debated issues concerning local governance. The present research aims to offer new insights
on the current mayors’ policy priorities, on their reaction to financial stress, on their
preferences concerning administrative modernization, modalities of service delivery, local
development and urban transformation, on their opinions on the trends of re-scaling of the
political systems.
These successive surveys on the figure of mayor are part of a larger and already long
experience of cooperation in a group of scholars, principally political scientists and
sociologists, from a large range of European Universities, who carried in the last twenty years
a series of surveys on actors performing different roles within local government; in the
framework and with the support of different international scientific networks, among which
the standing groups on Local Government and Politics (LOGOPOL) of the European
Consortium of Political Science (ECPR) and the European Urban Research association
(EURA).
The first survey of this series was focused on executive officers (CEOs) or the highest ranking
appointed and not elected civil servant or employee at the municipal level. This survey which
was supported by UDITE (Union des dirigeants territoriaux de l’Europe) has been called the
UDITE survey. Results of this survey were published by Klausen and Magnier (1998),
Dahler-Larsen (2000) as well as Mourtizen and Svara (2002; see also Heinelt/Haus 2002 for
the results of the German survey).
The next survey – precisely the POLLEADER (‘political leader’) survey – dealt with mayors
from municipalities with more than 10,000 inhabitants. Its comparative results were published
in Bäck et al. (2006) whereas results for single countries or on particular issues were
published separately in circ. 30 publications.
It was followed by a survey on councilors from municipalities with more than 10,000
inhabitants – called the MAELG (‘Municipal Assemblies in European Local Governance’)
survey. It was based on a stratified sampling (taking particular the regional distribution of the
total number of councilors in a country into account). Comparative results of this survey were
published in a special issue of Lex Localis (Vol. 10 [2012], No. 1) and a special issue of Local
Government Studies (Vol. 39 [2013], No. 5) as well as in Egner et al. (2013b) and Heinelt
(2014). In addition, national partners involved in the survey published national results (like
Egner et al. 20103a).
A fourth survey covers councilors, elected political leaders (presidents, Landräte etc.) and
leading bureaucrats (the highest ranking appointed and not elected civil servant or employee)
at the second tier of local government, i.e. of counties, provinces, départements, Landkreise
etc. A comparative report from the information collected through this ‘Second tier survey’
will be published during the next year (see Bertrana et al. 2015).
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Like in the previous experiences, the design research of the second round of “Political
Leaders in the European Cities” survey is based on a unique instrument, a written
questionnaire, translated in the different languages, in order to be used uniformly in a large set
of national cases. 29 European countries are already included in the project, coordinated in the
University of Florence.
Table 1:
Surveys on local government actors and the number of respondents by
countries (time in which they were carried out)
country
municipal
CEOs
(1995-1997)+
Austria
Belgium
Bosnia-H.
Bulgaria
Croatia
Czech Republic
Denmark
Estonia
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Hungary
Ireland
Italy
Lithuania
Netherlands
Norway
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Serbia
Slovacchia
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Turchia
Ukraina
UK/England
total
mayors
(2002-2004)
352
40
140
200
78
108
324
266
414
21
541
404
324
104
municipal
councillors
(2007-2008)
234
229
41
155
142
94
284**
3824
123**
2711
mayors
(2014-2015)
408 no second tier Austria
634
336 Belgium
Bosnia-H.
Bulgaria
233
331 Croatia
624
85 Czech Republic
no second tier Denmark
Estonia
no second tier Finland
720
308 France
894
1672 Germany
235
233 Greece
133 Hungary
no second tier Ireland
1201
131 Italy
Lithuania
1222
Netherlands
1134
226 Norway
328
120 Poland
no second tier Portugal
177 Romania
Serbia
Slovacchia
520
188 Spain
1346
1225 Sweden
1616 no second tier Switzerland
Turchia
Ukraina
700*
140* UK/England
11815
5285 total
188
636
145
82
20
256
366
224
‚second tier‘
councillors
(2012-2013)
* England, ** UK
+ Germany in 1999
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Political Leaders in European Cities (second round)
The questionnaire will be sent in each country to all the mayors in charge in municipalities
over 10000 inhabitants, between October 2014 and December 2015 (according to the different
timing of local elections in the partner countries).
It includes five sections:
1. The role of mayor (privileged tasks, agenda, support and problems in developing the
main projects)
2. Mayors in the town-hall (relations with bureaucracy and partisan structure, time
budget)
3. Some strategic choices (concerning budget strain control, urban planning and local
development, outsourcing and privatization of services)
4. Mayor and citizenship (instruments of communication, position on citizens’
participation schemes)
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5. Local government in the political system (opinion on reforms of local authorities
competence, inter-municipal and area wide cooperation practices, actual rescaling of
political systems)
and concludes with a synthetic assessment of the mayor’s career.
The data gathered will allow the publication of national reports cared by the national teams, of
a first final common comparative report, which will be ready at the end of 2017, and of
comparative thematic issues in specialized scientific journals cared by subgroups of the
network.
References
Bäck, Henry/Heinelt, Hubert/Magnier, Annick (eds.), 2006: The European Mayor: Political
Leaders in the Changing Context of Local Democracy. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für
Sozialwissenschaften.
Bertrana, Xavier/Egner, Björn/Heinelt, Hubert (eds.), 2015: Policy Making at the Second Tier
of Local Government in Europe, London/New York: Routledge (forthcoming).
Dahler-Larsen. P., 2000: Social Bonds to City Hall. Odense: Odense University Press.
Egner, Björn/Heinelt, Hubert 2008: “Explaining the Differences in the Role of Councils: An
Analysis based on a Survey of Mayors”, in: Local Government Studies, Vol. 34, No. 4,
529-544.
Egner, Björn/Sweeting, David/Klok, Pieter-Jan (eds.), 2013b: Local Councillors in Europe,
Wiesbaden: Springer/VS.
Heinelt, Hubert, 2014: The Changing Context of Local Democracy: Role perception and
Behaviour of Municipal Councillors. London/New York: Routledge (forthcoming).
Klausen, Kurt Klaudi/Magnier, Annick (eds.), 1998: The Anonymous Leader. Odense: Odense
University Press.
Mouritzen, Poul-Erik/Svara, James, 2002: Leadership at the Apex. Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh Press.
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