Local Political Leadership: The Art of Circulating Political Capital

Abstract

In this article, local political leadership is modelled as circulation of political capital. Based on intensive case studies of the political leadership performance of four mayors in Denmark, this article asks why the concept of political capital, introduced to local government studies in 1961 by Banfield, has in many ways sunk into oblivion. This article resuscitates the concept of political capital, using it to generate a general theory of local political leadership. In this framework, the crucial component of effective leadership is the mayor's ability, within a given institutional framework, to circulate (earn and spend) political capital. Effective leadership occurs when the leader continuously invests his or her political capital in ways which yield the greatest return. Clarence N. Stone's distinction between ‘power over’ and ‘power to’ is central to the model. Mayors performing what James H. Svara has labelled ‘facilitative leadership’ can in some cases accumulate substantial amounts of political capital.

Key words:

• Mayors
• political leadership
• power
• political capital
• Denmark

Acknowledgments

The author would first and foremost like to thank Rikke Berg, my collaborator in the research project on Danish mayors, which this article is a part of. Many of the ideas presented in this article have been developed in our common effort to understand Danish mayors and their leadership. Susan E. Clarke was facilitating the process by housing us at the Center to Advance Research and Teaching in the Social Sciences at University of Colorado in 2007. The author would also like to thank the participants in the session at the 2010 Urban Affairs Association's 40th Annual Meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii, where an earlier version was presented, for valuable comments. Finally, the author would like to thank Clarence N. Stone and James H. Svara for taking the time to comment on a draft version of the article. Since I use their work in the article and since part of the article is guessing why they did not include Banfield more in their own studies, I felt honoured to receive their comments and advice (and was happy to learn that they did not disagree with my analysis of their motives).