Introduction

Over the last 20 years or so there has been a welcome expansion of academic interest in the role of political and managerial leadership in improving the quality of local government and local governance. In particular, international comparative study of the leadership efforts of elected politicians, appointed public servants and civic actors has grown, and, as a result, our understanding of the roles of different kinds of leader in shaping local life chances, as well as in improving processes of decision-making, has been advanced (Mouritzen and Svara, 2002; Haus et al, 2005; Swianiewicz, 2006; Hambleton, 2015; Sweeting, 2017). This chapter is the first of three contributions in this volume that are designed to build on the established local government leadership literature and, hopefully, deepen our understanding of the changing nature of local, or place-based, leadership in modern systems of governance. Heinelt (Chapter 11) provides new insights by comparing and contrasting mayoral leadership in Germany and Poland, and Hanssen (Chapter 12) illuminates our understanding of climate change leadership by providing a case study of the way the parliamentary model of governance in Oslo, Norway has been reshaped in recent years. In this chapter, I focus on the important contribution that inspirational local leadership can make to the governance of the multicultural city.

For centuries, if not throughout human history, cities have grown and changed as a result of migration and immigration. A consequence is that all cities are, to some extent, multicultural or multi-ethnic. As Peter Hall notes, in his magisterial review of creative cities in history, cultural diversity has been a key asset in the emergence and development of dynamic cities:

In recent decades, the movement of peoples to cities has accelerated, and some cities, often described as ‘gateway cities’, now have a very high number of foreign-born residents (Saunders, 2010; Oosterlynck et al, 2019). This increase in urban diversity poses important challenges for city leaders and public managers, and for the systems of representation in urban governance.