This article connects two streams in the literature on local political leadership by identifying the effect of leadership in form on the altering nature of leadership behaviour in the era of ...governance as a promising field of research. In particular, it argues to proceed with a comparative new institutionalism agenda. In order to illustrate this approach it uses data from a comparative project on local political leadership in Europe and focuses on mayor business orientation as an aspect of external networking. The analysis shows institutional form matters, but is highly contingent upon leadership context and characteristics. Future research should not only improve the conceptualization of form and extend the scope of leadership behaviour under study, but also probe into the causal mechanisms that relate form, context and characteristics.
This article connects two streams in the literature on local political leadership by identifying the effect of leadership in form on the altering nature of leadership behaviour in the era of ...governance as a promising field of research. In particular, it argues to proceed with a comparative new institutionalism agenda. In order to illustrate this approach it uses data from a comparative project on local political leadership in Europe and focuses on mayor business orientation as an aspect of external networking. The analysis shows institutional form matters, but is highly contingent upon leadership context and characteristics. Future research should not only improve the conceptualization of form and extend the scope of leadership behaviour under study, but also probe into the causal mechanisms that relate form, context and characteristics.
Policy decision‐making modes in governance contexts have become increasingly participatory. This raises questions about legitimacy, and how to measure this concept. The current article advances a ...multifaceted measurement of perceived legitimacy of policy decision‐making modes in participatory governance, capturing the three components of legitimacy (input, throughput, and output) with two items each. This six‐item measure was tested in a vignette survey (total N = 4583), which was administered among four types of democratic stakeholders: politicians, civil servants, civil society, and citizens. Respondents completed the scale for four different policy decision‐making modes (representative, consultative, co‐decisive, and decisive). Our six‐item scale shows excellent internal consistency as an encompassing measure, while at the same time also allowing for fine‐grained analyses on difference patterns in the input, throughput, and output components of legitimacy. As such, it provides a relevant and parsimonious tool for future research that requires a multifaceted measurement of the perceived legitimacy of participatory governance.
Government formation is a crucial phase after elections. This article focusses on coalition formation in Belgian local government after the elections in 2006. Coalition theories have mainly been ...developed at the national level, but they are also applicable to the local level where there is no shortage of coalitions. This level offers the opportunity to not only test rather classic coalition theories such as minimum size theories or the coalitions' incumbency status. In a federal state like Belgium we can compare the local coalitions with coalitions made at higher levels. The results show that the local political parties prefer to form minimal winning and minimum parties coalitions, but not the smallest coalition that is possible. Coalitions are also more likely to form when they represent the incumbent coalition. Finally, political parties prefer congruent coalitions with the federal and regional government.
Voting motives are one of the most studied but still much contested question in political science. There has been much less concern at the local level although two main tendencies can be discerned. ...Some consider local elections as second order political contests. Others emphasize place‐bound patterns in voting motives. Still, more research beyond those theoretical presumptions is needed to empirically determine motives for the local vote. Therefore, this paper aims to address two questions: (RQ1) Which types of motives do voters attribute to their choice in local elections? (RQ2) What explains similarities and differences in RQ1? To answer these questions, we draw on the data of the Belgian Local Elections Study 2018 in which respondents were invited to answer an open‐ended question about their voting motives for the local elections. Voting in local elections does not appear to be of second order: voters predominantly have general and specific place‐bound reasons.
Zusammenfassung
Wahlgründe stellen eine der meist untersuchten, aber auch umstrittensten Fragen in der politikwissenschaftlichen Forschung dar. In Bezug auf die kommunale Ebene hat die Frage weit weniger Aufmerksamkeit erfahren, obgleich zwei Tendenzen unterschieden werden können: Auf der einen Seite werden kommunale Urnengänge als nachrangig (second‐order elections) angesehen. Auf der anderen Seite wird auf ortsgebundene Wahlgründe abgestellt. Dennoch ist weitere Forschung vonnöten, um ein systematischeres Verständnis lokaler Wahlgründe zu erreichen. In diesem Zusammenhang widmet sich dieser Aufsatz zwei Forschungsfragen: Erstens, welche Art von Begründungen geben Wählerinnen und Wähler an, um ihre Wahlentscheidungen zu erklären? Welche Faktoren erklären Unterschiede zwischen verschiedenen Typen angegebener Wahlgründen? Um diese Fragen zu beantworten, stützen wir uns auf die Belgian Local Election Study 2018, in deren Zusammenhang Teilnehmer in einer offenen Frage nach ihren Wahlgründen befragt wurden. Demnach erscheint die kommunale Stimmabgabe eher von ortsgebundenen Wahlgründen dominiert zu sein.
Résumé
Les motivations du vote constituent l'une des questions les plus étudiées mais toujours très contestées en science politique. La recherche s'est beaucoup moins intéressée au niveau local où l'on peut identifier deux tendances principales. Tandis que certains considèrent les élections locales comme des élections de second ordre, d'autres mettent l'accent sur les dynamiques locales pour comprendre les motivations du vote. Au‐delà de ces postulats théoriques, des recherches sont nécessaires pour capturer empiriquement les motivations du vote local. Cet article vise à répondre à deux questions: (Q1) Quels types de motivations les électeurs attribuent‐ils à leur vote lors des élections locales? (Q2) Qu'est‐ce qui explique les similarités et les différences? Nous nous appuyons sur les données de la Belgian Local Elections Study 2018, dans laquelle les personnes interrogées étaient invitées à répondre à une question ouverte sur leurs motivations de vote aux élections locales. Le vote au niveau local ne semble pas être de second ordre: les électeurs ont majoritairement des raisons locales à la fois générales et spécifiques.
A series of trends have emerged across Europe which have stimulated change in local government, local democracy and local leadership particularly where local government and local leaders have had to ...respond to crisis, economic downturn and the pressures of public engagement in times of restraint and public service decline. The special issue of Lex Localis (14:4, 2016) explored those factors in countries as diverse as Iceland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain, the Czech and Slovak Republics and Poland, to provide valuable insights into the turbulent times within which local self-government is located. That issue of Lex Localis was drawn from two related sources: the ECPR joint sessions work shop in Warsaw on local political leadership in times of austerity and from papers produced for the LocRef Cost Action democratic renewal workgroup. The paper here presents a review of, and retrospective introduction to that special issue. But by also drawing on other sources it offers an exploration of the broad trends shaping the development of local government and also develops a commentary on the factors which stimulate or hinder the success of local leadership, local government and local democracy in challenging times.
This paper focuses on the role of size in coalition formation in the Flemish region in Belgium after the local elections of 2006. A quantitative analysis already showed that size matters at the local ...level. In this paper, portfolio allocation is considered as an important part of coalition formation. This paper illustrates that combining research methods can enhance our knowledge about the role of size in the coalition formation process. The results demonstrate that parties consider a minimal winning and minimum parties coalition as a starting point for the negotiations and other factors influence the final coalition outcome. In portfolio allocation proportionality rules, but parties also prefer competences related to their policy profile. Intra-party and personal characteristics play an important role in selecting the executive mandates.
This article sets the framework for the subsequent special issue on political recruitment and career development of local councillors in a comparative perspective. After conceiving recruitment and ...career development as a funnel-like process filtering out the few from the few and leading to patterns of interpositional mobility in the political realm, the article proceeds by proposing the ideal-types of layman and professional to characterize the poles of the continuum upon which current trends in recruitment and career may be situated. Overall, these trends seem to point at a shifting structure of opportunities with predominant professionalization and partial socio-demographic democratization. Still, from a comparative perspective the extent to and the pace by which these general trends emerge are likely to be contingent upon the country, the municipality and the individual councillors studied. The comparative dataset on which the issue draws offers a unique opportunity to discern empirical patterns in the factors discussed above. The article concludes by outlining the issue and summarizing its main findings revealing a complex reality in the different phases of recruitment and career development of the contemporary councillor in Europe. Adapted from the source document.
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