Politicisation in Local Government: How Political Turnover Affects Administrative Turnover in Dutch City Management

While political turnover leads to bureaucratic turnover in many countries, in others it does not. Formal politicisation is usually regarded low in the Netherlands, but anecdotal evidence among city managers suggests discrepancies among formal policy and informal practice. Also, institutional safeguards against bureaucratic politicisation are weaker in local government than in central government. In this paper, I study the effect of political turnover (incoming mayors and incoming city executive boards), and political and financial crises on city manager turnover. I draw on an original database of all city manager appointments (±1500) in 350 Dutch municipalities from 2014-2025. In this database I map every appointment and enrich these with indicators about city crises. Preliminary results both confirm conventional politicisation theory but also challenge critical aspects.