The European mayor - Political leaders in the changing context of local democracy

Major structural changes have been taking place in European local government systems around the turn of the millennium. Changes that have already had substantial consequences for local political leadership and are likely to bring about further change in the future. A number of such restructuring trends are sweeping over the continent, but from different starting points, at varying pace and in various mixed configurations. The research was designed to assess how, by playing on these different contexts, the restructuring trends and reforms inscribed in the wider framework of increasing global exchanges impact on the concept and praxis of political representation at local level. Four different trends of change are in focus: structural transformations in terms of privatisation, contracting out and general mimicry of private sector institutional arrangements ('New Public Management'); changes in central-local relations, most often in form of decentralisation, whereby new tasks have been allocated to the local level; the importance of political parties; internal institutional arrangements of local authorities. Central topics in the study are recruitment processes, perspectives on democracy, leadership styles, networks, intergovernmental relations, the importance of the party system and horizontal power relations in the local government organization.千禧年前后，欧洲地方治理体系正经历着重大结构性变革。此类变革已对地方政治领导层产生了深远影响，并有望在未来催生更多变革。诸多此类结构性变革浪潮正席卷欧洲大陆，但各国起点各异、推进速度不一，且呈现出多样化的混合形态。本研究旨在探析：在上述各异的情境下，嵌入日益深化的全球交流大框架的结构性变革浪潮与改革举措，将如何影响地方层面政治代表的理念与实践。本次研究聚焦四大变革趋势：一是以私有化、合同外包以及对私营部门制度安排的普遍模仿为特征的结构性变革（即新公共管理（New Public Management））；二是中央与地方关系的调整，其主流形式为分权，即向地方层面赋予新的权责；三是政党的作用；四是地方政府机构的内部制度安排。本研究的核心议题包括：人员招聘流程、民主观念、领导风格、社会网络、政府间关系、政党制度的作用，以及地方政府组织内部的横向权力关系。