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Institutional Environments and Mayors’ Role Perceptions

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Political Leaders and Changing Local Democracy

Part of the book series: Governance and Public Management ((GPM))

Abstract

The role of mayors and their role perception may depend on the changing role of local governments, different national institutional settings, and recruitment patterns. This chapter presents an analysis of the most significant changes among European mayors in terms of their role perceptions over the past decade. In this respect, the chapter examines mayors’ role perceptions in relation to the changing role of local governments. Furthermore, the question is addressed whether role perceptions of mayors are affected by different forms of their election and institutionally defined horizontal power relations at the municipal level throughout Europe, including recruitment patterns of mayors.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The analysis by Bäcks (2006) included ‘internal networking’ as well, but in this survey round questions related to this task were omitted and therefore data on this topic was insufficient.

  2. 2.

    The mayors were given the opportunity to give their assessments by choosing one of the five rates on a Likert scale with regard to each specific statement, of which they mainly agreed.

  3. 3.

    The statement ‘to guide staff in day-to-day activities’ had the least importance for the European mayors. However, this task has higher importance now than according to the first survey.

  4. 4.

    This refers to the statements ‘to defend and promote the influence of local authorities in the political system’, ‘to implement the programme of his/her political party/movement’, and ‘to manage the implementation of his/her personal policy choices’.

  5. 5.

    This refers to the statement ‘to set goals for transforming the administrative structure’.

  6. 6.

    This refers to the statements ‘to ensure the correctness of the political-administrative processes and ‘to help citizens resolve complaints with the municipal government’.

  7. 7.

    This refers to the statements ‘to attract resources from external sources’ and ‘to represent the city to the outside world’.

  8. 8.

    This refers to the statement ‘to guide the staff in the day to day activity’.

  9. 9.

    This refers to the statement ‘to implement the programme of his/her political party/movement’.

  10. 10.

    Responses were given on a Likert scale ranging from 0 (not at all) to 4 (a very great extent).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

    Ivan Koprić & Jasmina Džinić

  2. Faculty of Political Science, University of Iceland, Reykjavík, Iceland

    Eva Marín Hlynsdóttir

  3. Interdisciplinary Centre of Social Sciences – CICS.NOVA, NOVA University of Lisbon, Lisboa, Portugal

    Enrico Borghetto

Authors
  1. Ivan Koprić
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  2. Eva Marín Hlynsdóttir
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  3. Jasmina Džinić
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  4. Enrico Borghetto
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Technische Universität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

    Hubert Heinelt

  2. Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Florence, Firenze, Italy

    Annick Magnier

  3. Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Florence, Firenze, Italy

    Marcello Cabria

  4. Wetenschappen, Vakgroep Politieke Wetenschappen, Gent, Belgium

    Herwig Reynaert

Appendix

Appendix

Table 5.2 Results of a Wilcoxon test for the significance of differences in responses to the mayors’ tasks between the two surveys
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Table 5.3 Results of a Wilcoxon test for the significance of differences between the two surveys
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Table 5.4 Operationalisation of control variables for the analysis of the relationship between mayors’ role perceptions and recruitment patterns
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Koprić, I., Hlynsdóttir, E.M., Džinić, J., Borghetto, E. (2018). Institutional Environments and Mayors’ Role Perceptions. 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_5

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