Abstract
The main purpose of this chapter is to trace persistence and change in leadership styles. Empirical findings show that mayoral leadership has changed considerably over the previous 12 years. Nowadays, the European mayors adopt an open and more cooperative exercise of power, instead of the authoritarian track. Strategic leadership predispositions increased substantially, and a visionary leadership style became the most common. Additional contextual and personal factors that were included in the last survey show that the correlation between the financial situation of the municipality and the leadership style was the strongest one. The increase in strategic predisposition and cooperative exercise of power seems reasonable, when taking into account the growing complexity of local governance, the ongoing fiscal stress and growing competition among cities: A demanding environment that puts the mayors under extreme pressure.
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Notes
- 1.
Since 2005, new amalgamations have been introduced in countries like Denmark, Finland, Germany, Turkey, Estonia, Latvia, Ireland, Netherlands and Greece, while upper tiers were introduced, merged or abolished in Greece, Italy, Denmark, France, Finland (in 2017), Turkey (see Baldersheim and Rose 2010; Teles 2016, Swianiewicz 2010; Steiner 2016).
- 2.
According to Eurostat survey, public trust in local government has fallen by 4 percentage points in Europe since 2008. The largest drop was registered in Spain (−23 per cent) and Cyprus (−21 per cent), followed by Greece and France (−11 per cent) in the time period from 2008 to 2016 (see https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2016/oct/15/how-europeans-are-losing-trust-in-local-democracy).
- 3.
Some cases fell exactly on the middle point in the Likert scale, and they were decided based on the response to the tenth question of the survey: ‘In the case of persistent budget strain, which is on your opinion the best reaction a mayor can adopt?’ On the one hand, ‘attract new investments/activities/population’ was considered as an answer related to a strategically oriented predisposition and ‘ask and hope for transfers from upper levels of government’ as a reproductive response. On the other, ‘raise local taxes’ and ‘reduce expenses of the administration, municipal services and/or personnel’ was regarded as an authoritarian exercise of power and ‘co-operation with other municipalities and/or with private sector’ (e.g. PPPs) in order to ‘provide common services with reduced costs’ as a cooperative answer.
- 4.
These are England, Iceland, Latvia, Serbia and Sweden. See Chap. 2 in this book.
- 5.
The intensity of political conflict was addressed by the following question: ‘We want to find out to what extent relationships inside your council are characterised by political conflict. How would you rate the level of conflict, from 0 (totally consensual) to 10 (totally conflictual)?’ The 11-point scale was transformed into a 3-point hierarchical variable: low conflict (0–3), moderate conflict (4–6) and high conflict (7–10).
- 6.
The professions were grouped in the questionnaire according to the International Standard Classification of Occupations (see http://www.ilo.org/public/english/bureau/stat/isco/).
- 7.
The analysis was based on the following question of the questionnaire: ‘There is often talk about a left-right dimension in […] politics. Where would you place yourself on a left-right dimension?’ The 11-point scale was transformed to a 5-point one: far left (0–1), left (2–3), centre (4–6), right (7–8) and far right (9–10).
- 8.
To explore mayors’ most important political aims, the following question of the questionnaire was used: ‘There is a lot of talk these days about what should be the main political aims for the next ten years. Below you will find a list with four goals to which different people would give top priority. Would you please say which one of these you, yourself, consider most important? And which of the four goals would you consider as second most important?’ Mayors’ leadership dimensions were examined according to the goal they consider to be the most important (and the second most important).
- 9.
Overall, addition of the predictors to the model that included only the intercept significantly improved the fit of the model and data, χ 2(39) = 110.906, p-value < 0.001, Nagelkerke R 2 = 0.342.
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Hlepas, N., Chantzaras, T., Getimis, P. (2018). Leadership Styles of European Mayors: How Much Have They Changed Over the Past 12 Years?. 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_7
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