Leading people: Some issues of local government leadership in Britain and America

The local agenda 21 issue commission in bath and North‐East Somerset: Review of a community consultation exercise towards sustainability

“…Issues of ownership and leadership arose from the outset between the various council directorates engaged in the commission process; between the steering group of council officers who directed and managed the commission but who were not commissioners, and the commissioners themselves; and, amongst the commissioners, between the elected members and the co-optees (see, for example, the discussion by Elcock, 1995). Stresses and frustrations within the newly unitarised council, exhausted by re-organisation and still reviewing its internal posts, procedures and decision-making processes, were especially in evidence in a cross-departmental (and thus cross-budgetary) enterprise, as anticipated by Voisey et al (1996).…”

Can We Compare Local Governments? A Manifesto for New Courses

“…Even where local conventions or legal restrictions prevent the overt use of party labels, local party systems are commonly reflections of the national party systems. This is demonstrably the case in American local elections where party labels are not usually used on candidates' pUblicity but everyone in the community knows who the Democrat and Republican candidates are (Elcock, 1995).…”

“…Commonly, around three-quarters of councillors are content with such "back bench" roles and are willing to leave policymaking and resource allocation to the small number of their fellows who are interested in this. In the United States, councils with Mayors appear to play no policy-making role -this is left largely to the Mayor (Elcock, 1995). The distinction between leadership and back bench roles among local politicians therefore seems likely to increase as this model becomes more widespread (Elcock, 1998c).…”

Elected Mayors: Leading Locally?

“…He also believed that the process of electing mayors would engage local voters and reverse the pattern of declining local turnout. Such interest generated, and to some extent was generated by, a growth of academic discussion of elected mayors overseas and how they might be instituted in England and Wales (Stoker and Wolman, 1992;Borraz et al, 1994;Elcock, 1995). Yet a persistent finding of research is that elected mayors do not increase voters' interest (Copus, 2006).…”