Mayoral Leadership and Facilitative Governance

Abstract

This analysis offers a contingency model of mayoral leadership based on a long view of a city's institutional context and substantive interests. This model generates four distinct governance types or styles of mayoral administration—populism, progressivism, constitutionalism, and managerialism. The author uses empirical evidence drawn from familiar mayoral administrations to analyze shifts within and across these governance types. By integrating normative public administration into the dynamics of urban governance, this model yields robust findings concerning mayoral—regime relationships. The author concludes that the renewal of a fiscally stressed big city is in facilitative governance. Facilitative governance blends managerialism and constitutionalism, whereas its normative basis is democratic conservatorship. By activating the ethos of public administration, a mayoral conservator facilitates the regime conditions necessary for economic, political, and social inclusion.