Strengthening Local Governance Capacity through Interactive Political Leadership

Abstract

Local governments are facing a growing number of wicked and unruly problems that call for the exercise of political leadership that defines the problems and challenges at hand, designs new and innovative solutions and mobilizes support for their implementation. Unfortunately, many local councilors tend to spend most of their time acting as complaints services for the citizens, advanced case managers engaged in detail-regulation and controllers of the conduct of public bureaucracy. Consequently, they fail to exercise the kind of political leadership that is needed to deal with the deep-seated and emerging problems that confront local communities in times of crisis and turbulence. The result of this failure is a steady decline in political trust and a paralysis of local democracy that may trigger the rise of authoritarian populism. To counter such a development, this panel aims to explore how local councilors can strengthen their political leadership and rebuild trust through the advancement of institutional reforms that allow them to engage in sustained interaction with local citizens and organized stakeholders that can provide input such as experiences, ideas and resources that allow the local councilors to better understand and find innovative solutions to pressing policy problems. In short, the panel aims to describe the content and impact of recent attempts to develop an ‘interactive political leadership’ that can stimulate policy innovation and enhance the governance capacity of local governments. The papers will draw on new research on political leadership and interactive governance and will have a comparative focus.