Marcel Boogers

From Princeps to President? Comparing Local Political Leadership Transformation

Abstract Using conceptual dimensions identified by the literature on political leadership, this article compares its transformations at the local level in Europe. Often associated with the alleged shift to governance, the strengthening of the executive comes forward as the underlying tendency in contemporary local leadership. Empowered individualised leadership emerges, in terms of coming to and taking office, challenging traditional notions of tasks, style and conditions of local leadership. Such a tendency does not imply the apparent Americanisation of political leadership however, as the articles in this collection show, rather a path dependent European route has emerged.

Independent Local Political Parties in the Netherlands

Abstract In the last 15 years, the Netherlands has witnessed the enormous growth of independent local parties and of their electoral support. In order to assess the success of independent locals in the Netherlands, this paper explores how independent local parties distinguish themselves ideologically, organisationally, and operationally. It presents the results of two online surveys of 1,800 independent and other local parties in the Netherlands. Compared to local party branches, independent local parties are more successful in performing the organisational, programmatic and nomination function of political parties. They are spearheading the change to a modern cadre party with politicians and a small number of active volunteers taking care of the partys rootedness in society. Furthermore, they enrich local politics with new political dividing lines, smoothing the entry of new demands, themes, and issues onto the political agenda. Finally, they are proving to be more resourceful in recruiting citizens to stand as candidates for municipal councillorship.

Local political parties in the Netherlands : Anomaly or prototype?

Local political parties are usually regarded as parts of larger party organisations prevalent within all levels of representative institutions. Nonetheless, many European countries are familiar with independent local parties that have no formal links with supralocal parties. As the existence of these parties has often been seen as a political anomaly, we know little about the ways in which independent local parties organise and operate (Saiz/Geser 1999).

Pulling the strings: an analysis of informal local power structures in three Dutch cities

Abstract The study of local power structures is highly relevant for a better understanding of local governance networks. Not only does it draw attention to the power dimension of local governance, it also brings to focus the individuals who play a role on and behind the scenes of governance networks. This article gives a comparative analysis of informal local power structures in three Dutch cities. Drawing on the classical reputational method of Hunter, it presents the 25 most influential persons of each city, their organisational backgrounds and influence resources. The results show that local power structures mainly consist of government executives (mayors, aldermen), entrepreneurs and directors of third sector organisations; local councillors and local civil servants are virtually absent on the lists of influential persons. Comparative analyses demonstrate that the composition of a local power structure is linked with the strategic policy objectives of the city. The article concludes with a brief summary of the findings and points to the value of local power studies for local governance research.

Inter-municipal Cooperation in the Netherlands

In this chapter, we describe some of the features of the Dutch way of organizing inter-municipal cooperation, using a nation-wide study. The permissive institutional structure provides municipalities with a wide range of organizational structures for cooperation, including both public and private law options. This has resulted in a wide range of almost 800 inter-municipal cooperations and in high variations in both the level and complexity of inter-municipal cooperations for different municipalities. All in all this ‘crazy-quilt’ pattern of cooperation seems to be working quite well, as both democratic quality and performance in terms of perceived benefits and (transaction) costs are for most cases at a satisfactory level.

Lokale democratie doorgelicht: inleiding

In recent years, attention has increasingly been focussing on the quality of local democracy. Through the transfer of central government tasks to the municipalities, the importance of local government for citizens in the Netherlands has increased. This also places higher demands on the way local democracy functions. For various reasons, it is not easy to meet these demands. The debate on the quality of local democracy can be reduced to two basic questions: what is local and what is democracy? Instead of answering these questions, the authors of the article (editors of this new series) demonstrate what knowledge is needed to do this. They outline broadly the agenda for a local democratic audit, for which this article is an introduction. After a short theoretical discussion of the importance of local democracy, the authors point out those knowledge gaps that still exist in their opinion. They do so on the basis of current research. After identifying the key relations in local democracy, they present an agenda for further research.