Mayoral Leadership in Times of Polycrisis: Mayors as Crisis Managers during the refugee crisis and COVID-19

Focussing on the influential position of mayors in the German political system and applying the theoretical approach of political leadership this paper offers relevant insights to understand the performance of municipalities in times of polycrisis. Mayors act as agents of change within different transformational challenges triggered by crises. Empirically, the research is based on a large-scale survey of mayors undertaken at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (together with Jörg Bogumil and David Gehne) in 2023 including every municipality over 20.000 inhabitants and a sample of smaller municipalities with a response rate of 49% (n=974; N=2.001). Hence, it will depict the perception of their position in the polycrisis as head of the administration, political player towards the council and representant within the political system. Even though the mayor’s impact within the multi-level governance is limited, he can try to exert influence and shape relationships. Especially during the last years, many crises unfolded on the local level and left the mayor in charge of coordination while concurrently being dependent on decisions made on higher levels e.g. providing appropriate housing for migrants and refugees or implementing certain COVID-19 restrictions. Thus, this paper aims at presenting research-based insights on mayors as agents of change, how they prioritise policies and verbalise certain demands and criticism. Even though some scholars used the term of leadership regarding mayors in Germany (e.g. Heinelt et al. 2018; Egner 2017), the profound discussion of the theoretical approach vis-à-vis mayors like David Sweeting, Robert Hambleton amongst others presented for the British case has not reached the German discourse on mayors yet fully. Hence, this paper offers an innovative access to mayors in Germany. Leadership as an interactional approach evolves around the relationship between a leader and his followers. Due to the theoretical openness and connectivity of leadership as a concept, multiple aspects can be included since it incorporates not only institutional and formal but also informal relations which can be assumed to be even more relevant in the polycrisis because many decisions are time sensitive and informational relations are assumed to be relevant. In times of crisis, a powershift towards the executive can be seen (Bogumil/ Holtkamp 2023) which can also be applied to mayors since the decision making within the council tends to take longer than executive decisions made in the mayor’s office. In conclusion, this paper will offer empirical and research-based arguments on how mayors shape their municipalities under the conditions of the polycrisis and link it to the theoretical approach of political leadership deriving insights on mayoral leadership in Germany. Hence, it aims at adding to theoretical understanding of the position of the mayor as representative of the municipality within the political system but also to academic discourses on political leadership in times of crisis followed by critical reflections what this means for local democracy.