Whether citizens should directly elect the mayor or whether only councillors should be able to indirectly choose the local political to the exclusion of the public from the process, is one of the most controversial debates ...

The chapter aims at highlighting and analyzing attempts to restore or improve the existing institutions of representative democracy – the councils and the councillors – in 15 different European countries, from a comparative ...

Sir Peter Soulsby, the Leicester South MP since 2005, resigned from Parliament to fight for what he called ‘a proper job’: the elected mayor of Leicester City. That office was elected on 5th May 2011, but before that event ...

Much has been made of the dual polity concept of local government. By comparison less has been made of conceptualising local government’s dual purpose role. The political and service provision roles of local government ...

The paper reports the results of research conducted among councillors in England which explored how they operate in complex governing networks where they interact with a range of public and private bodies. Councillors, as ...