Introduction

Since the 1990s, there has been a political and academic debate on the relevance of local political leadership in general and the role of the mayor in particular. It is pointed out that local political leadership is crucial for mobilizing local development potential, which is seen not only as very important in times of competition for business and residents but also for achieving social cohesion in the local community (see, for instance, the contributions in John and Cole, 1999; Haus et al, 2005a; Hambleton, 2019). Particularly in the context of the debates on a shift from government to governance, conditions were sought for a ‘complementarity of urban leadership and community involvement’ (CULCI) – regardless of whether the community to be involved is a resource-full business community or a broad citizenry. Such a complementarity has been considered as crucial for effective as well as legitimate local policies (Haus et al, 2005b; Haus and Heinelt, 2005; Heinelt et al, 2006). Based on these debates, a triumphal march of the ‘strong mayor form’ of local government could be observed in Europe (for the distribution of this form among European countries see Heinelt et al, 2018b: 38). The ‘strong mayor form’ is mainly constituted by power relations between the mayor, the city council and the municipal administration in which the ‘elected mayor controls the majority of the city council and is legally and in actuality in full charge of all executive functions’ (Mouritzen and Svara, 2002: 55).

In Germany, the strong mayor form existed only in two of the federal states (Bavaria and Baden-Wuerttemberg) until the 1990s, but was extended to almost all other federal states in the second half of the 1990s (Wollmann, 2004). In Poland, the strong mayor form was introduced in 2002. Therefore, the power relations between the mayor, the city council and the municipal administration are similar in both countries. However, the strength of the mayors resulting from these institutionally determined power relations differs somewhat – depending on how the institutionally determined strength of a mayor is measured (Heinelt et al, 2018b: 35– 37).