Performance models have been the norm in research on national and state executives, but oddly this model has rarely been extended to the next level of executive office, mayors. The increasing number of African American mayors suggests that race may complicate the performance model of approval at the local level. This research tests a performance model of mayoral approval that takes racial factors into account. The model is tested in two white cities with white mayors and two black cities with black mayors. Performance is measured by citizen evaluations of a variety of urban conditions, some of which citizens can observe firsthand. Findings indicate that (1) performance matters in evaluating black and white mayors, and its influence does not seem to be related to the race of the mayor; (2) performance has more explanatory power over mayoral approval than race, a pattern that holds for both black and white mayors; (3) race has more impact on the approval of black mayors than on white mayors; and (4) blacks in black cities have lower evaluations of local government performance in their cities than blacks in white cities. We conclude that the performance model is generalizable to the local level, even with the complications of race.
Does it matter for municipal policy which party controls the mayorship in municipal government? The bulk of the existing evidence says no. But there are a variety of theoretical reasons to believe that mayoral partisanship should affect municipal policy. We examine the impact of mayoral partisanship in nearly 1,000 elections in medium and large cities over the past 60 years. In contrast to previous work, we find that mayoral partisanship has a significant impact on the size of municipal government. Democratic mayors spend substantially more than Republican mayors. In order to pay for this spending, Democratic mayors issue substantially more debt than Republican mayors and pay more in interest. Our findings show that mayoral partisanship matters for city policy. Our findings add to a growing literature indicating that the constraints imposed on city policy making do not prevent public opinion and elections from having a meaningful impact on municipal policy.
In most local developing settings, the political leader and the municipal manager are embodied in the same figure, the directly elected mayor. This research explores the impact of mayoral quality on local public finances in a developing country. Mayoral quality is operationalized as educational background and job‐related expertise to analyze its impact on two local financial indicators: property tax collection and social spending per capita. The mayoral quality thesis is tested across 40 Colombian municipalities over five years (2000–2004). After considering other political, economic, and external influences, the findings reveal that mayoral quality is associated with greater property tax collection and more social spending per capita. This positive influence, however, decreases under external constraints—such as presence of illegal armed groups. This study demonstrates how much influence the mayor can have when circumstances permit. The findings point to the significance of electing qualified mayors, as decentralization may not directly improve subnational finance. Instead, through decentralization, qualified mayors contribute to improved local public finance.
Most city governments are either of the strong mayor-council (MC) form or of the councilmanager (CM) type. A 1986 survey, as reported in the 1988 issue of the Municipal Year Book [14,8], indicates that 43.5 percent of cities had a mayor-council form, 53.5 percent had a city manager form, and the remaining 3 percent had a commission form of government. The government structure of MC cities consists of (1) an executive branch with a popularly elected mayor who has the authority to hire and fire other city officials outside the merit system, and (2) a legislative branch in a relatively small city council with 5 to 9 members. The government structure of CM cities is similar to private businesses in that voters, council, and the city manager play the roles of stockholders, board of directors, and chief executive officer, respectively. CM cities also maintain relatively small councils which hire and fire the city manager who is professionally trained and has direct authority over other city employees. The mayor in CM cities is selected either by the council or directly by voters to serve only as a ceremonial officer. The CM form is an institutional guarantee against a possible stalemate between the executive and legislative branches of government. In this paper we study whether or not the CM form is more efficient than the MC form of government in formulating and implementing public policies. The literature on the relative superiority of a city manager form of government is inconclusive. One might hypothesize that a city manager has incentives similar to those of the manager of a profit maximizing firm and this should lead to higher relative efficiency and lower costs than a mayor-council form of government. The city manager has an incentive to lower costs and increase productivity to ensure his job security. Although the mayor under the MC form of government also has an incentive to reduce costs and increase productivity, the mayor is accountable directly to the public unlike the city manager who is accountable to the city council. The city council as
Can cities solve the biggest problems of the twenty-first century better than nations? Is the city democracy's best hope? In the face of the most perilous challenges of our time-climate change, terrorism, poverty, and trafficking of drugs, guns, and people-the nations of the world seem paralyzed. The problems are too big, too interdependent, too divisive for the nation-state. Is the nation-state, once democracy's best hope, today democratically dysfunctional? Obsolete? The answer, says Benjamin Barber in this highly provocative and original book, is yes. Cities and the mayors who run them can do and are doing a better job. Barber cites the unique qualities cities worldwide share: pragmatism, civic trust, participation, indifference to borders and sovereignty, and a democratic penchant for networking, creativity, innovation, and cooperation. He demonstrates how city mayors, singly and jointly, are responding to transnational problems more effectively than nation-states mired in ideological infighting and sovereign rivalries. Featuring profiles of a dozen mayors around the world-courageous, eccentric, or both at once-If Mayors Ruled the World presents a compelling new vision of governance for the coming century. Barber makes a persuasive case that the city is democracy's best hope in a globalizing world, and great mayors are already proving that this is so.
U.S. cities are limited in their ability to set policy. Can these constraints mute the impact of mayors’ partisanship on policy outcomes? We hypothesize that mayoral partisanship will more strongly affect outcomes in policy areas where there is less shared authority between local, state, and federal governments. To test this hypothesis, we create a novel dataset combining U.S. mayoral election returns from 1990 to 2006 with city fiscal data. Using regression discontinuity design, we find that cities that elect a Democratic mayor spend a smaller share of their budget on public safety, a policy area where local discretion is high, than otherwise similar cities that elect a Republican or an Independent. We find no differences on tax policy, social policy, and other areas that are characterized by significant overlapping authority. These results suggest that models of national policymaking are only partially applicable to U.S. cities. They also have implications for political accountability: mayors may not be able to influence the full range of policies that are nominally local responsibilities.
Observers of city politics have often stated that political leadership—usually mayoral leadership—is a crucial ingredient in a city's ability to deal with its problems. And studies of successful leaders in urban systems have led to the formulation of a model of the “political entrepreneur” who is adept at accumulating political resources and pyramiding them to gain increased influence. Based on four years of observation of politics in Oakland, California, this study suggests that successful mayoral leadership and resource-pyramiding may be limited by governmental structure, the personality of the mayor, and the nature of the political system. In Oakland, fragmented institutional authority and the council-manager form of government have created obstacles for elected officials. A privately oriented, “nonpolitical” mayor has avoided publicity and has tended to underutilize, rather than pyramid, his resources. Finally, in an amorphous political system characterized by a lack of group and party activity, a mayor is denied both information and support. By examining the ways in which the performance of Oakland's mayor diverges from a model of political leadership, we can identify some of the factors that support or limit such leadership.
This article is an exploratory assessment of whether or not black mayors, as compared to white mayors, demonstrate patterned differences in their policy preferences and expenditures. It is hypothesized that black mayors are inclined to spend more on welfare related items than on other budgetary items. Employing urban expenditure data over time in six cities and focusing upon seven expenditure categories, it is found that, as a rule, black mayors do not differ greatly from white mayors in the way they spend. However, their preferences do seem to differ. Black mayors, even when they would like to, are constrained from spending according to their preferences. It is argued that differences in expenditure patterns are highly conditioned by environmental and structural factors. Suggestions are made for further research.
Despite reports of physical violence and psychological abuse against US officeholders, the subject has not been addressed in research at any level of government. This study reports results from survey research of mayors with three aims: examination of the frequency, types, and correlates of experiences of physical violence and psychological abuse among mayors; exploration of gender differences; and estimates of the effects of violence and abuse on mayors’ desire to stay in office. Our findings suggest that US mayors face meaningful levels of physical violence and psychological abuse – and these events are widespread across types of cities. Our data also show that female mayors are more likely than men to experience most types of violence and abuse. And, although having these experiences did not reduce the majority of officeholders’ political ambition, those who suffered physical violence were more likely than those who faced psychological abuse to have considered curtailing their political careers. Finally, we consider the implications for these results on the quality and diversity of future representation.
Este estudio tuvo como objetivo examinar las relaciones entre el bienestar psicolgico, el apoyo social percibido y la percepcin de salud en adultos mayores. La muestra estuvo constituida por 250 personas, 146 mujeres y 104 hombres, con edades entre 60 y 87 aos (promedio de 70,8 aos) de la ciudad de Concepcin (Chile). Los resultados mostraron que el bienestar psicolgico presentaba mayores relaciones con el apoyo social percibido que con la percepcin de salud, que los hombres informaron mayor bienestar psicolgico y mejor percepcin de salud que las mujeres y que las personas casadas o con pareja estable informaron mayor bienestar psicolgico y mayor apoyo social percibido que aquellas
Acknowledgments vii List of Contributors ix PART 1 INTRODUCTION Chapter One Mayor-centrism in Context 3 Jeffrey R. Henig and Wilbur C. Rich PART 2 CASE STUDIES Chapter Two Baltimore: The Limits of Mayoral Control 27 Marion Orr Chapter Three Chicago: The National Model Reexamined 59 Dorothy Shipps Chapter Four Boston: Agenda Setting and School Reform in a Mayor-centric System 96 John Portz Chapter Five Detroit: There Is Still a Long Road to Travel, and Success Is Far from Assured. 120 Jeffrey Mirel Chapter Six Cleveland: Takeovers and Makeovers Are Not the Same 159 Wilbur C. Rich and Stefanie Chambers Chapter Seven Washington, D.C.: Race, Issue Definition, and School Board Restructuring 191 Jeffrey R. Henig PART 3 THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES Chapter Eight Structure, Politics, and Policy: The Logic of Mayoral Control 221 Kenneth J. Meier Chapter Nine Mayors and the Challenge of Modernization 232 Clarence N. Stone Chapter Ten Concluding Observations: Governance Structure as a Tool, Not a Solution 249 Jeffrey R. Henig and Wilbur C. Rich Index 267
This article discusses leadership in urban governance by examining the Mayor of London. It uses a conceptual framework of four elements: the external environment to local leadership; the institutional arrangements in which leaders operate; the local environment; and the personal characteristics of leaders. It is argued that the Mayor of London is 'strong' within the Greater London Authority, but 'weak' in formal terms in the governance of London. In order to be effective in London governance, the Mayor needs to facilitate the co-operation of others in order to wield power. The area of negotiation of the leadership of the Mayor of London is broad and takes place between the Mayor and the organisations which form the governance of London.
Policymakers and scholars are increasingly looking to cities to address challenges including income inequality. No existing research, however, directly and systematically measures local political elites’ preferences for redistribution. We interview and survey 72 American mayors—including many from the nation’s largest cities—and collect public statements and policy programs to measure when and why mayors prioritize redistribution. While many of the mayors’ responses are consistent with being constrained by economic imperatives, a sizable minority prioritize redistributive programs. Moving beyond the question of whether mayors support redistribution, we find that partisanship explains much of the variation in a mayor’s propensity for redistribution. Moreover, the impact of partisanship very rarely varies with institutional and economic contexts. These findings suggest that national political debates may be shaping local priorities in ways contrary to conventional views, and that they may matter even more than other recent findings conclude.
One potential consequence of increasing women’s numeric representation is that women elected officials will behave differently than their men counterparts and improve women’s substantive representation. This study examines whether electing women to local offices changes how local government expenditures are allocated in ways that benefit women. Using compositional expenditure data from more than 5,400 Brazilian municipalities over eight years, we find significant differences in the ways men and women mayors allocate government expenditures. Our findings indicate that women mayors spend more on traditionally feminine issues, and less on traditionally masculine issues, relative to men mayors. In regard to specific policy areas, we find that women spend more on women’s issues, including education, health care, and social assistance, and less on masculine issues, including transportation and urban development, relative to men mayors. We further find that women’s legislative representation significantly influences the allocation of expenditures as a larger percentage of women councilors increases spending on traditionally feminine issues, as well as education, health care, and social assistance, relative to other policy issues. These findings indicate that women local elected officials improve women’s substantive representation by allocating a larger percentage of expenditures to issues that have historically and continue to concern women in Brazil.
This article presents the first empirical study in a Latin-American country on the effects of managerial quality upon municipal performance in education. Using 6 years of data from 40 Colombian municipalities, I assess the influence of mayoral qualifications—education and job-related experience—on the percentage of the eligible population actually enrolled in school. After considering other political, economic, and demographic factors, the findings show that mayoral qualifications are associated with greater school enrollment. This positive influence, however, decreases under external constraints, such as the presence of illegal armed groups. The findings should apply in any setting where the provision of social services is decentralized and where the mayor also plays the role of city manager, performing both political and administrative functions. The study has implications for countries struggling to eradicate illiteracy as results show that mayoral human capital enhances educational performance.
Democracies widely differ in the extent to which powerful elites and interest groups retain influence over politics. While a large literature argues that elite capture is rooted in a country's history, our understanding of the determinants of elite persistence is limited. In this paper, we show that allowing old-regime agents to remain in office during democratic transitions is a key determinant of the extent of elite capture. We exploit quasi-random from Indonesia: Soeharto-regime mayors were allowed to finish their terms before being replaced by new leaders. Since mayors' political cycles were not synchronized, this event generated exogenous variation in how long old-regime mayors remained in their position during the democratic transition. Districts with longer exposure to old-regime mayors experience worse governance outcomes, higher elite persistence, and lower political competition in the medium run. The results suggest that slower transitions towards democracy allow the old-regime elites to capture democracy.
En este artículo se estudian las redes de apoyo social de las personas mayores a partir de los resultados de investigaciones empíricas llevadas a cabo en varios países latinoamericanos. Según los autores, su principal aporte ha sido el de organizar y sistematizar el conocimiento actual sobre la materia para así facilitar su revisión y análisis. Con este fin se ha realizado una acuciosa revisión bibliográfica, seguida de una categorización de los hallazgos y una síntesis de los resultados. En primer lugar, el tema de las redes de apoyo social de las personas mayores se sitúa en un marco conceptual, el cual sirvió de base para el análisis y discusión al respecto que tuvieron lugar en la Reunión de Expertos en Redes de Apoyo Social a las Personas Mayores: el Rol del Estado, la Familia y la Comunidad, celebrada en diciembre de 2002 en la sede de la CEPAL en Santiago de Chile. En la sección siguiente se presenta una síntesis de los conceptos básicos relacionados con el tema. Luego se establece la relación entre las redes de apoyo social y el papel del género en los procesos de diferenciación que se producen en la vejez. A continuación se examinan los nexos entre los apoyos sociales y la calidad de vida de las personas mayores. Se finaliza con una síntesis de las conclusiones más relevantes del estudio.
Este libro es el resultado de un proceso de investigación y reflexión sobre la manera de incorporar a las personas mayores en la implementación y el seguimiento de la Agenda 2030 para el Desarrollo Sostenible desde la perspectiva de derechos humanos. Pone el acento en el cambio demográfico como una megatendencia mundial que tendrá efectos en la implementación de los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible, así como en sus interconexiones con el ejercicio de los derechos humanos de las personas mayores en América Latina y el Caribe. Los principios de universalidad y no discriminación que guían la Agenda 2030 ofrecen la posibilidad de utilizar los instrumentos internacionales de derechos humanos para lograr que nadie se quede atrás. En tal sentido, la Convención Interamericana sobre la Protección de los Derechos Humanos de las Personas Mayores —mientras no exista un instrumento universal— resulta de vital importancia para facilitar a los Gobiernos y a la sociedad civil el aprovechamiento efectivo del potencial de las personas mayores para no dejarlas atrás y avanzar hacia la anhelada igualdad para todas y todos que impulsa la Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe.
This study examines the impact of black mayors on police department policies of interest to black citizens in 105 municipal governments in the United States. The correlates of community-oriented policing, minority recruitment, black representation among sworn officers, citizen controls over department policies, and departmental responses to public disorder incidents are examined, and the presence of a black mayor during the time frame in question is found to be associated with both black representation among sworn officers and adoption of citizen controls over the department. The implications of these findings for the study of black mayoral influence are explored.
Introduccion: las enfermedades psiquiatricas constituyen un problema de salud que afecta todas las esferas de la vida humana. Objetivo: describir la morbilidad psiquiatrica de pacientes mayores de 18 anos de edad. Metodos: estudio descriptivo transversal. La muestra estuvo constituida por 260 pacientes. Los entrevistados fueron pacientes mayores de 18 anos de edad atendidos en el Departamento de Salud Mental del Policlinico Heroes de Giron, durante el ano 2015. Se revisaron las historias clinicas de los pacientes y se les aplico el metodo clinico, entrevista semiestructurada. Resultados: las entidades psiquiatricas de mayor prevalencia fueron las Psicosis (38,84 %) y los Trastornos neuroticos (36,92 %); seguidas de un predominio de las Adicciones (13,07 %) y las Demencias (11,15 %). Conclusiones: la morbilidad psiquiatrica que predomina esta constituida por las Psicosis y los Trastornos neuroticos.