Mayors and Local Governing Coalitions in Democratic Countries: A Cross-National Comparison

Abstract

This paper focuses on the form or ‘morphology’ of mayor governing coalitions in municipalities of 11 democratic countries. If there exists an ‘analytical consensus’ regarding the form that these coalitions can adopt, the ‘empirical consensus’ seems to lean toward a modal form: the ‘pro-growth coalition’. Nevertheless, our results show the existence of two other forms of mayor governing coalitions which are as numerous as the pro-growth: ‘progressive coalitions’ and ‘integrative coalitions’. Therefore, these progressive and integrative coalitions, usually tested as case studies, have been shown here as empirical generalisations through a cross-national analysis that included 1700 cases. The aim of this paper is therefore to transcend ‘empirical parochialism’ in urban governance where the mayor is interested above all in urban growth and cooperation with business, and to give empirical generalisation to other local governance definitions, where local government leaders might be interested in implementing welfare policies with the cooperation of other political actors, be they parties, associations or upper levels of government.