Directly Elected Mayors in Urban Governance: Impact and Practice

Though mayors directly elected by the residents of a city are so commonplace as to go without comment in the United States and Canada, in many other countries, including England, Germany, and Hungary, they are a recent development, where they have been pitched as an effective, democratically accountable governing option. But is that actually true? Do directly elected mayors deliver better governance than the alternatives? This book presents the results of an in-depth study of that question and the role of the elected mayor in general, drawing on data from a large number of cities from around the world to show the wide range of policy approaches and outcomes that the position can entail.