Institutional Personalism in Local Governments: A Cross-National Study of European Cities

Institutional personalism -- the power balance between individual politicians and the collegial entities to which they belong (especially parties) -- has been studied extensively at the national level. Yet, systematic analysis and cross-national studies of institutional personalism in local government remain limited (there are some pieces of evidence, for instance, the dominance of mayors caused by direct mayoral elections). Institutional personalism at the local level refers to the power balance between local individual politicians (mayors and councilors) and the collegial entities in which they operate (the council and local parties) at a specific point in time. This balance is influenced by institutions. rules, and regulations. This paper proposes a new typology for analyzing institutional personalism in local governments in two dimensions: (1) the inter-institutional dimension, which refers to the 'horizontal relationship' of the mayor vis-à-vis the council; and (2) the local electoral system, and the political entity it focuses on - the local party or individual candidates for the council. The proposed typology is applied to a dataset compiled from various comparative local government databases, covering the five largest cities from 41 European democracies. This examination reveals institutional variance between and within countries. It provides new insights into local democracy by identifying local government institution types that are personalized, collegial, or hybrid.