Mayors in the Town Hall: Patterns of Relations and Conflict Among Municipal Actors

Abstract

The chapter explores the way in which local actors interrelate with each other and the environment surrounding them. For doing so, it analyses the balance of power among municipal actors in European town halls and to what extent these relationships are characterised either by consensus or by conflict. The findings confirm the existence of differences among types of government, confirming the validity of the Mourtizen–Svara’s typology to capture the division of functions at the apex of local leadership forms of local government. When analysing the level of conflict, other factors such as the level of local autonomy in the political system, the municipality’s economic situation or the mayor’s ideological position explain variation.