The abstract of his paper is the following: ‘Much is made by the opponents of directly elected mayors as a method of local political leadership that it results in too much power resting in a single set of hands. The paper will test the veracity of that claim by presenting recent research on the way directly elected mayors have gone about re-shaping their councils to meet their own political priorities and policy preferences. It will examine the powers that are held by directly elected mayors in English local government and compare those to the alternative model of political leadership – the council appointed leader. The paper will assess whether the current model of elected mayors is able to produce effective local political leadership’
