Mayors and Governing Coalitions

In his controversial book ‘If mayors ruled the world’ (2013) US political theorist Benjamin Barber argues that mayors can and do play a major role in solving today's grand societal challenges in domains like social inclusion and poverty, climate change and sustainability and safety and public order. It is increasingly recognized that meeting such challenges requires concerted action by a multiplicity of actors at different geographical scales and levels of government, and from different sectors (state, market and civil society). According to Barber, mayors because of their ‘pragmatism and problem-solving’ and penchant for ‘cooperation and networking’, as well as their creativity and innovativeness (2013: 13) are well-equipped to contribute to effective collective action in these domains. Against this backdrop this paper analyzes the roles of mayors in building governance coalitions (or city regimes; cf. Stone 1989), bringing together relevant actors in efforts to meet major challenges facing their communities. What role, if any, do European mayors in cities of varying size, and in different national local government systems in local governance coalitions aimed at solving major local and regional issues? In the paper the patterns of interdependence characteristic for various types of issues will be analyzed, and we will investigate the role that mayors may or may not play in building coalitions between the various relevant actors. This will serve as the basis for subsequently looking into the success of these mayoral activities. Important issues here are whether the roles of mayors and their chances of being successful vary across different issue domains or across different national local government systems and are different for appointed, indirectly and directly elected mayors.