Depoliticization of governance in large municipalities in Europe

Bačlija Brajnik, Irena (author), Kronegger, Luka (author), Prebilič, Vladimir (author)

The premise of our research paper is that large (by the size of the population) municipalities are more complex to govern and manage, and this, in turn, calls for a more professional and apolitical local government. Using data from the largest European survey of mayors, we analyzed the influence of mayors and chief administrative officers in Europe and checked for correlations with the size of the local government. We present empirical evidence to support that the perceived influence of mayors varies with the size of the municipality regardless of the institutional configuration of power relationships. We found that very large municipalities (80,000 or more inhabitants) had weaker mayors. The presumption that a larger, more complex local (urban) environment calls for more professional leadership has been addressed in numerous publications; however, the answer was usually beyond the reach of the empirical tests.

• Language: English
• Keywords: chief administrative officer, city size, mayor, Europe
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FDV - Faculty of Social Sciences
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2024
• Number of pages: Str. 774-789
• Numbering: Vol. 60, iss. 2
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-154323-75353a05-a65d-8eb0-22bd-8cf230cedbba
• UDC: 352(4)
• ISSN on article: 1078-0874
• DOI: 10.1177/10780874231165776
• COBISS.SI-ID: 146836227
• Publication date in RUL: 07.02.2024

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Urban affairs review
• Shortened title: Urban aff. rev.
• Publisher: SAGE, American Political Science Association, Urban and Local Politics Section, Drexel University
• ISSN: 1078-0874
• COBISS.SI-ID: 16199261

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: mesta, lokalna samouprava, župani, politična odtujitev, Evropa