Recasting Leadership Reform in Australian Local Government: A Typology from Political Theory

Bligh Grant (), Brian Dollery () and Michael Kortt

Local Government Studies, 2016, vol. 42, issue 6, 1024-1046

Abstract: Changes to elected leadership in Australian local government have seen greater authority assigned to mayors in several jurisdictions. A Discussion Paper recently released under the auspices of the Australian Centre for Excellence in Local Government (ACELG) has recommended further reforms, arguing inter alia that mayors ought to enjoy a personal mandate and a stronger strategic role. This paper places these suggested reforms into context by developing a typology of local government leadership from political theory. We argue that this quadrilateral typology provides a critical portrait of recommendations for stronger leadership which, in this instance, have been transposed from two unitary systems of government (England and New Zealand) to the Australian federal system, without due consideration of the literature examining stronger mayoral roles. It is argued that caution should be exercised when redrafting legislation governing mayoral authority, a process presently underway in New South Wales (NSW).

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03003930.2013.861820 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:flgsxx:v:42:y:2016:i:6:p:1024-1046

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/flgs20

DOI: 10.1080/03003930.2013.861820

Access Statistics for this article

Local Government Studies is currently edited by Helen Hancock

More articles in Local Government Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().