Mayors and Political Parties

The chapter takes a view, from different perspectives, at the results of an analysis of the relationship between mayors and political parties at the local level. First, it shows how a mayor assesses her/his political ideology and the political ideology of the parties. This has been done both for mayors with party membership and—even more importantly—for non-partisan mayors. Second, the relationship between mayors and parties is reflected in respect to a Party Significance Index developed by the authors and compared to a similar index developed by Fallend et al. (Divided Loyalties? Mayors Between Party Representation and Local Community Interests. In H. Bäck, H. Heinelt, & A. Magnier (Eds.), The European Mayor: Political Leaders in the Changing Context of Local Democracy. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2006) for analysing the data collected by the first mayor survey. Third, the chapter looks at the question whether or not the relationship between mayors and parties is determined by different local government systems, other structural variables (like the population size of a municipality), or personal characteristics of mayors.