Abstract
Akin with many local government systems globally, leadership continues to be an enduring focus for architects of public policy reform in Australia. The introduction of the new local government acts from 1989 saw the roles of mayors, councillors and appointed staff subject to systemic reform designed to reinforce the political-administrative divide. More recently, debate surrounding reform has focused upon the option of prescribing more authority to mayoral roles. This chapter initially contextualises these reforms, asserting that in Australia some in the community may not be in favour of greater powers for local leaders. We then provide a five-part typology of leadership in local government before examining in depth the current leadership arrangements across Australia’s local government systems. The chapter then focuses upon the conjecture and refutation over a proposed “semi-executive” role for mayors , arguing that an assortment of institutional arrangements are available for reform and that reformers ought to consider the particular “place-based” conditions that may or may not be conducive to changes in leadership arrangements. Further, encouraging local electorates to have greater voice in the types of institutional arrangements that govern them is assessed as beneficial.
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Notes
- 1.
The authors would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting that this point be included.
- 2.
Commenting upon the work of the Widdicombe Committee in England that delivered its report in the mid-1980s Copus (2006, p. 3) states: “Widdicombe’s main concern was the potential risk of conflict that could arise between two separate governing bodies with competing mandates … In addition, the personalisation of politics, seen as inherent in the mayoral system and accepted in ‘countries with a presidential system’, was thought to be ‘generally disliked in Great Britain’ (emphasis added).
- 3.
The complexity of these approaches is not to be underestimated and is an important component of their appeal. It is, however, possible to provide readers with indicative samples of the three approaches. For Krasikova et al. (2013, p. 1310) Destructive Leadership (DL) is defined as “volitional behaviour by a leader that can harm or intends to harm a leader’s organisation and/or followers to pursue goals that contravene the legitimate interests of the organisation and/or employing a leadership style that involves the harmful use of methods of influence with followers, regardless of justifications of such behaviour”. The key point here is that it is intentional, and can be contrasted with mere ineffective leadership or constructive behaviour and can range from petty-tyranny through to a desire to destroy and organisation. Nor is it strictly pathological; on the contrary: situational factors such as “goal blockage” can result in destructive leadership and as such ameliorating these features of an organisation can ameliorate DL. As discussed by Vince and Mazen (2014) the concept of “violent innocence” is used to depict effects of relatively mundane actions of leaders—such as consistently being late to meetings, through (ostensibly) no fault of their own—upon subordinates in an organisation. Harding’s (2014) re-working of the master-slave dialectic to a theory of the powerlessness of the powerful involves inter alia the traditional contradiction of the master-slave relationship (i.e.: where in fact the master is the slave); also sybaritism, or grieving the loss of pleasure, on the part of the manager: They become a “slave to the machine” (our phrase) and derive a libidinal pleasure from their control of workers, whom they infantilise.
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Grant, B., Drew, J. (2017). Leadership in Australian Local Government Systems. In: Local Government in Australia. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-3867-9_8
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