The Making of a Pro-Labor Mayor

[Excerpt] One of the most important functions of central labor councils (CLCs) is making electoral politics work for labor. While the issues that a CLC tackles need to be linked to a national labor agenda, which includes fighting against privatization, securing a living wage, and promoting unions, the actual struggles take place on a local level. An effective council needs to listen to and develop consensus around the issues of concern to its member unions and then endorse those candidates who will be most supportive and effective at addressing those issues. After a candidate is elected, CLCs need to continue to have a political presence. Ideally, CLCs use electoral politics to build community alliances, understand power relationships, and wield political power in a way that builds the labor movement. Our success in the Atlanta mayoral election shows that a CLC with active affiliates can change the course of an election and forward labor\u27s agenda after an election. The stakes of the mayoral race were high: labor had the potential to stop privatization; strengthen construction unions; secure the jobs related to the 1996 Olympics for union workers; and demonstrate labor\u27s power and electoral muscle. We needed a decisive victory and the CLC had to deliver

Elected Mayors: Leading Locally?

The directly elected executive mayor has been with us in England for more than a decade. Drawing inspiration from European and American experience (see Elcock and Fenwick, 2007) the elected mayor has appealed to both Labour and Conservative commentators in offering a solution to perceived problems of local leadership. For the Left, it offered a reinvigoration of local democracy, a champion for the locality who could stand up for the community: in one early pamphlet, a Labour councillor envisaged that an elected mayor could “...usher in a genuinely inclusive way of doing civic business as well as giving birth to an institution that encourages and values people” (Todd, 2000: 25). For the Right, it offered the opportunity to cut through the lengthy processes of local democratic institutions by providing streamlined high-profile leadership. Although inconsistent in their expectations of what the new role of executive mayor would bring, Left and Right shared a view that leadership of local areas was failing. Despite the very low turnout in referendums on whether to adopt the system, and the very small number of local areas that have done so, the prospect of more executive mayors, with enhanced powers, refuses to exit the policy arena

Mayoral views on economic incentives: valuable tools or a bad use of resources?

Mayoral Views on Economic Incentives: Valuable Tools or a Bad Use of Resources? explores which types of cities and mayors embrace – or reject – tax concessions and subsidies to attract or retain business. The authors find considerable variation in how individual mayors think about these issues; personal traits of the mayor (e.g., party and time in office) and city level characteristics (e.g., economic performance) do not predict their views on economic incentives. The absence of clear patterns suggests to the authors that the supposedly omnipresent pressure to provide inducements to business investment is not the recurring, vivid presence in the lives of mayors that we might expect.Citi Community Development and The Rockefeller Foundatio

2016 Menino Survey of Mayors Final Report

Report on research findings.The 2016 Menino Survey of Mayors represents the third scientifically rigorous and nationally representative survey of American mayors released by the Boston University Initiatives on Cities. The Menino Survey, based on interviews with 102 sitting mayors conducted in 2016, provides insight into mayoral priorities, policy views and relationships with their key partners, including other levels of government. This year's research was largely focused on Mayors' "people priorities" on subjects like poverty, immigration, inclusion, and city image. Mayors also discussed the impact of the 2016 presidential election on their cities and their hopes for the Trump administration.Cit

Prefacio

Este volumen está formado por seis artículos. El primero de ellos es el de la propia autora, la Dra. Marina Mayoral, que nos agasaja explicándonos cómo ha concebido "La construcción de Deseos". A este primer artículo, interesantísimo, le sigue un trabajo de M. José Rodríguez Campillo en el que se analiza "El título Deseos en la obra de Marina Mayoral". A continuación, Anna Corts Curto se ocupa del análisis del "Universo íntimo de Marina Mayoral: Brétema". El cuarto artículo, de Christian Snoey, presenta un minucioso estudio sobre "Tiempo y tiempos en Deseos". "La Figura de Constanza en Deseos" es analizada por María Anguera y Marina Silva. Cierra el volumen una "Breve aproximación a la figura de Lilith en Deseos", a cargo de Abel Moreno

Runoff vs. plurality:the effects of the electoral system on local and central government behaviour

Plurality and runoff systems oer very different incentives to parties and coalition of voters, and demand different political strategies from potential candidates and chief executives. Italian mayors and city councils are elected with a different electoral system according to the locality's population, while municipalities are otherwise treated identically in terms of funding and powers. We exploit this institutional feature to test how the presence of different electoral systems affects the central government decisions on grants, and the local government decisions on local taxes. We find evidence that the upper-tier governments favour runoff-elected mayors, and that runoff-elected mayors levy lower taxes. This is broadly consistent with the literature on runoff and plurality rule electoral systems